Stray was a surprise summer hit back in 2022 (probably because you got to play as a cat), and now the feline-based adventure game is being turned into an animated movie. The director of the first Ice Age movie is said to be attached to the project.
It will be a “hopepunk” movie
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Robert Baird, executive at Annapurna‘s animation subsidiary, said that Stray contains “something so emotional,” which the team is hoping to capture for the adaptation.
Baird also calls the game as “hopepunk,” a term that describes a story with a sense of positivity and “radical kindness” amidst challenges, according to Wikipedia at least. He goes on to say that the animated version is going to be the “first and greatest hopepunk movie that’s ever been made.”
Additionally, Andrew Millstein, who works with Baird over at Annapurna Animation, explains that Stray is “wildly popular,” which is one of the reasons the studio is opting to adapt it.
Details about the Stray movie are scarce at the moment, so we don’t know whether it will directly follow the story of the game or be its own thing. Time will tell on that front, no doubt.
Aside from a macOS version coming at some point, not much has been said about Stray in recent months. We gave it a great score in our review, noting its “gorgeous cyberpunk world” and the fact that it’s a very “authentic cat simulator.”
If you’re a fan of Stray, you can look forward to the animated film version of it, along with potentially some more adaptations of Annapurna products.