Vice Studios could soon help Chains, Dallas, Hoxton, and Wolf break into the movie and TV business after acquiring the film and television rights to the Payday franchise.
The company behind Gangs of London announced it was laying the groundwork to bring the popular video game franchise to a new medium as part of a partnership with Starbreeze Entertainment today. No details regarding how the pair will translate co-op heist gameplay for new audiences were revealed, suggesting it will be a while before plans materialize.
“PAYDAY has a world that is bigger than the game itself,” president of Vice Amy Powell said in a statement. “There’s mythology behind the masks and a crew of characters with real history that is incredibly exciting to explore. Partnering with Starbreeze Entertainment, we’re excited to build that universe and see how far it can go on screen.”
Payday got an explosive start when its first game, Payday: The Heist, launched for PlayStation 3 and PC in 2011. Set around four masked bank robbers, its gameplay tasked players with working together to commit crimes across different scenarios as quickly and cleanly as possible. Players showed up to put together plans and improvise when schemes fell apart, with its formula eventually expanded upon in 2013’s Payday 2 and 2023’s Payday 3.
Former Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren, who exited the company in 2024 following the disastrous launch of Payday 3, commented on the possibility of a potential Payday movie or show when speaking to GamesIndustry.biz back in 2023. At the time, he called it a “perfect fit,” teasing that such a project could further explore the background for characters like Chains, Dallas, Hoxton, and Wolf.
Sjögren’s comments arrived just months after Starbreeze announced it had plans to develop live-action movie and TV projects based on Payday in February 2023. The studio said it had partnered with the Los Angeles-based Stockholm Syndrome at the time, but with the announcement of its new partnership with Vice today, it seems those plans likely fizzled out.
Although it’s currently unclear how future, non-game Payday stories will play out, current CEO Adolf Kristjansson offered his own comments as part of today’s news: “Our goal is to grow PAYDAY from a game into a full entertainment platform, owning the heisting genre. PAYDAY is the cornerstone franchise for Starbreeze, and we’re highly selective about partners who can expand its universe beyond games. VICE Studios is the perfect partner for this project, combining creative ambition with the production capability that feels authentic to PAYDAY.”
While Vice and Starbreeze work out the next steps for Payday to try something new, fans of the games are mostly still waiting for a new entry after Payday 3 failed to impress. According to SteamDB, the third mainline heist game has struggled to reach a concurrent player count higher than 1,000 for the last two years. Despite launching nearly 13 years ago, Payday 2’s current 24-hour peak sits at 23,515.
While we wait for more Payday to come together, you can read our game reviews for Payday 1, 2, and 3. You can also read about recent changes at Starbreeze that resulted in layoffs and the cancellation of a co-op Dungeons & Dragons game.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
