Netflix Is Making a ‘Crazy Taxi’ Movie as Sega Partnership Expands Beyond Sonic
Netflix and Sega are expanding their relationship with a feature adaptation of Crazy Taxi, bringing the chaotic arcade favourite to the screen alongside new projects based on Sonic the Hedgehog and Stranger Than Heaven.
One of Sega's most recognisable arcade games is heading for the screen. Netflix and Sega are developing a feature film based on Crazy Taxi, the frantic driving game that turned picking up passengers and racing against the clock into one of the Dreamcast era's most memorable experiences.
The film forms part of a broader collaboration between Netflix and Sega that stretches beyond the hugely successful Sonic the Hedgehog franchise and puts several very different corners of Sega's catalogue in line for screen adaptations.
Netflix and Sega are putting the arcade favourite on the big screen
The Crazy Taxi adaptation is being developed as a comedy feature, with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand attached to write the screenplay. The pair wrote the 2025 The Naked Gun reboot.
Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher of Original Film are producing alongside Sega producer Toru Nakahara. All three already have experience bringing Sega properties to audiences through their involvement with the Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise.
Exactly what form Crazy Taxi will take on screen remains to be seen. Netflix has not yet announced a director or cast, and it has not revealed a release date.
But the source material certainly gives the filmmakers plenty to work with.
The original game dropped players into a colourful open city and challenged them to pick up passengers, then race them to their destinations against the clock. Speed, shortcuts and reckless driving were all part of the appeal, turning what sounded like an ordinary taxi job into controlled chaos.
Crazy Taxi is part of a much bigger Netflix partnership
The announcement isn't limited to a single film.
Netflix and Sega are also working on a new animated Sonic the Hedgehog series aimed at younger children. At the same time, Sega is developing Stranger Than Heaven as a live-action film.
That makes the collaboration particularly interesting. Instead of simply replicating the formula that turned Sonic into a successful screen franchise, Sega is opening up considerably different parts of its gaming catalogue.
Crazy Taxi lends itself to broad, chaotic comedy. Sonic is already one of gaming's most established family entertainment properties, while Stranger Than Heaven comes from Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and offers something considerably more dramatic.
Together, the projects show how valuable established video-game worlds have become to film and streaming companies looking for properties with audiences already attached to them.
A screen adaptation arrives as Sega revives the franchise
Timing also matters for Crazy Taxi.
The franchise became closely associated with Sega's Dreamcast after the original arcade game was brought to the console in 2000. Its simple premise, frantic gameplay and distinctive personality helped make it one of Sega's best-known properties outside the company's biggest franchises.
Sega is now bringing the series back to gaming, giving the Netflix movie a chance to introduce Crazy Taxi to an audience that may never have played the original releases.
For longtime players, however, the challenge will be different.
A Crazy Taxi movie needs more than a familiar yellow cab and a recognisable title. Much of the game's identity came from the feeling of barely controlled mayhem — racing through traffic, taking ridiculous shortcuts and trying to squeeze one more fare into the remaining seconds.
Capturing that energy could be what separates a genuinely fun adaptation from another video-game property being transferred to the screen.
Video games continue their Hollywood takeover
The expansion also demonstrates how much the relationship between games and Hollywood has changed.
Video-game adaptations were once treated cautiously after years of inconsistent results. Major studios and streaming platforms now increasingly look to gaming libraries for established characters, worlds, and fan communities.
Sega already knows what can happen when that transition works.
Rather than treating Sonic as the end of that experiment, the company now appears prepared to see which other properties can make the same journey.
Crazy Taxi may be one of the stranger choices on paper — there isn't exactly a complicated narrative mythology behind driving passengers around at absurd speeds — but that simplicity could also be its biggest advantage.
With the right tone, Netflix and Sega don't need to turn it into something it isn't.
They just need to make the ride suitably crazy.