- Key Takeaway: Nexon and Embark Studios have partnered with Chernin Entertainment — producers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Ford v Ferrari — to develop film and TV adaptations of Arc Raiders and The Finals.
- Chernin Entertainment was selected after a competitive bidding war involving multiple production companies and studios.
- Reports suggest one project will become a feature film while the other becomes a high-budget TV series, though which game gets which format hasn’t been officially confirmed.
- No release dates, cast, or plot details have been announced — both projects are likely years away from materializing.
- Embark Studios will work closely with Chernin to preserve the creative identity of both game worlds.
- Meanwhile, Arc Raiders is testing a PvE toggle mode from October 13-20 in response to player demand, following a significant drop in concurrent players since its October 2025 launch.
Hollywood’s appetite for video game IP doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and the next two games in the pipeline are ones extraction shooter fans will recognize immediately. Arc Raiders and The Finals, both developed by Embark Studios and published under Nexon, are officially being developed for film and television by Chernin Entertainment — the production company behind major films like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Ford v Ferrari, and TV series including The Madness, Man on Fire, Chief of War, and See on Apple TV.
The deal was announced on October 5, 2026, with Nexon confirming that Chernin Entertainment was selected after a competitive bidding process involving multiple production companies and studios vying for the rights. That level of competition signals genuine Hollywood interest in these properties — this wasn’t a deal that just happened to fall into place.
What the Deal Actually Covers
Both franchises are on the table. Arc Raiders and The Finals are each being developed as separate projects, and early reports suggest one will head toward a feature-length film while the other becomes a high-budget TV series — though neither Nexon nor Chernin has officially confirmed which game is getting which format. For now, the teams are described as exploring all options, and with no release dates, cast announcements, or plot details attached to either project, these adaptations are realistically several years away from screens.
What both sides have made clear is that Embark Studios will be directly involved in the development process, working alongside Chernin’s creative teams to ensure the adaptations stay true to the worlds and tone that players have invested in. That’s an important distinction — involvement from the original developers tends to matter when adapting games with specific aesthetics and lore.
Patrick Söderlund, Nexon’s executive chairman and Embark Studios’ founder and CEO, framed the deal as the next step in a longer transmedia strategy. “Nexon’s agreement with Chernin Entertainment is the next big step in growing ARC Raiders and THE FINALS into deeply integrated transmedia experiences that reward the passion of our global player community,” Söderlund said. “Throughout the process, the creative teams at Embark Studios will work closely with Chernin to ensure the creativity that defines both of these properties extends into all-new formats.”
David Ready, president of film at Chernin Entertainment, was equally direct about the ambition: “ARC Raiders and The Finals are exactly the kind of opportunities we’ve been building towards at Chernin Entertainment: ambitious global IP with the potential to become major franchises across film and television. Nexon and Embark have created visually stunning, atmospheric worlds that contain countless stories to tell.”
What Are Arc Raiders and The Finals?
If you’re not already plugged into both games, here’s a quick rundown of what the adaptation teams are working with.
Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter set on Earth in the year 2180, where humanity has been forced underground by a relentless mechanized threat known as the ARC. Players take on the role of Raiders — scavengers who venture to the surface during low-ARC activity windows to gather resources and bring them back. It’s a third-person PvPvE game with a strong atmospheric sci-fi identity that blends survival tension with tactical combat. Since its launch on October 30, 2025, the game sold over 12.4 million units within its first ten weeks, with peak concurrent players exceeding 480,000 at launch.
The Finals is a different kind of game — a free-to-play first-person shooter built around the concept of a televised virtual combat game show, with destructible environments and physics-based mayhem at its core. It’s racked up more than 30 million registered players across three years, making it one of the most popular free-to-play shooters in the space.
Both games have distinct enough visual identities and world premises to translate meaningfully to screen. Arc Raiders in particular has the bones of a proper sci-fi survival story — terrifying machines, competing underground factions, and a surface world that hasn’t been human for a long time. The Finals, meanwhile, is a wild action spectacle premise built around a future where combat is entertainment.
Arc Raiders Is Also Testing a Long-Requested PvE Mode
The adaptation announcement comes at an interesting time for Arc Raiders, which has experienced a meaningful drop in active players since its strong launch. Peak concurrent players on PC have settled to around 29,000-40,000 in recent months, down sharply from the launch-window highs — a trajectory that’s common for extraction shooters but still worth noting.
In response to sustained player demand, Embark is testing a PvE matchmaking toggle from October 13-20, 2026. For the duration of the test, players can switch between the classic PvPvE experience and a cooperative-only mode where the ARC machines are the only threat and other Raiders can’t shoot you. Solos, duos, and trios will all queue into the same PvE pool.
There are some limitations to what’s available in PvE — Night Raids, the Hidden Bunker, the Locked Gate, and the Frigate are all excluded from the test. Loot in PvE sessions also carries slightly lower value compared to the standard PvPvE experience, to maintain the risk-reward balance for competitive players.
Embark has been explicit that this is a test, not a commitment. The studio confirmed that 51% of surveyed players expressed interest in a dedicated PvE mode, and that the friendly-player segment of the community has been growing steadily since launch while the pure PvP group has stayed stable. Interestingly, Arc Raiders was originally conceived as a PvE game before pivoting to PvPvE ahead of its final launch — which makes the community’s push for a cooperative mode feel less like a feature request and more like a return to roots. Whether the October test results push Embark toward making it permanent remains to be seen.
The Frozen Trail 2.0 update also drops on October 8, the same week Embark made the game temporarily free-to-play across Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S from October 8-12 — a push to grow the player base ahead of the PvE test and the new content wave.
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