Xbox’s ‘Sea of Thieves’ Is Getting a Live-Action Movie, and the Spider-Man Director Behind It Makes Perfect Sense
The wave of video game adaptations crashing through Hollywood shows no sign of slowing down, and Xbox is sailing right into the middle of it. After years of watching competitors bring their biggest franchises to screens large and small, Microsoft’s gaming arm has made no secret of its ambitions to do the same, and the results have been striking. The massive success of ‘A Minecraft Movie’ in theaters and the breakout hit that ‘Fallout’ became on streaming have clearly emboldened the company to push even further.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma summed up the company’s confidence directly, telling Entertainment Weekly, “We’ve got the number two show of all time on Amazon, Minecraft was top 5 in 2025, Call of Duty is bigger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” That is a bold claim, but the numbers backing it up have made Hollywood studios pay close attention. According to Entertainment Weekly, more than a dozen film and television projects based on Xbox properties are currently in development.
The newest entry in that pipeline is one that fans of high-seas adventure will want to know about. As part of an exclusive cover story, Entertainment Weekly confirmed that a live-action ‘Sea of Thieves’ movie is now in development, with Marvel filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton set to produce through his multimedia production company, Hisako Films. A director or writer has not yet been attached to the project. Cretton, who helmed ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ and is directing the upcoming ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ brings serious blockbuster credentials to a property that has long felt tailor-made for the big screen.
‘Sea of Thieves’ is a 2018 action-adventure game developed by Rare and published by Xbox Game Studios, in which the player assumes the role of a pirate exploring a vast open world via ship, sometimes forming alliances with other players and sometimes going head-to-head. By April 2024, the game had attracted more than 40 million players. Translating that kind of communal, player-driven experience to film is no small challenge, but Xbox’s chief content officer has a clear sense of the approach. Matt Booty told Entertainment Weekly, “The main character of a ‘Sea of Thieves’ game is actually the player and the community. It’s a super social game, but there’s a tone to ‘Sea of Thieves.’ It’s built on a very cooperative community, so you can start to sense what that’s going to be like.”
Other confirmed Xbox adaptations in the pipeline include a sequel to ‘A Minecraft Movie,’ Netflix animated series based on ‘Gears of War’ and ‘Minecraft,’ a live-action ‘Wolfenstein’ show at Amazon, and a third season of ‘Fallout’ already in the works. The pirate adventure stands out among them as one of the more creatively interesting challenges, given how much of its identity lives in the shared experience between players rather than in any fixed narrative or cast of characters.
With a producer of Cretton’s caliber already aboard and Xbox clearly treating its IP slate with serious intent, the ‘Sea of Thieves’ film has all the early makings of something genuinely exciting for fans of the game and newcomers alike. The open seas, the treasure hunts, the alliances and betrayals, all of it maps remarkably well to the kind of rousing adventure cinema audiences have been hungry for since the golden era of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ Whether this crew can actually chart a course to that level is the question worth asking, so drop your thoughts in the comments below on who you think should captain this ship as director.
