Kingdom Come: Deliverance director Daniel Vávra is stepping away from game development
The writer and designer will instead helm efforts to produce a Kingdom Come movie
The director behind the Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, Daniel Vávra, is stepping away from game development, developer Warhorse Studios has announced.
Instead, the outspoken writer and game designer will take on a new role, spearheading a Kingdom Come movie project, the company confirmed to the Czech press on Tuesday.
“Dan has a new role. That’s the creation of the Kingdom Come movie,” studio boss Martin Frývaldský told CzechCrunch (machine translated). “I’m sure people will wonder if this is some kind of breakup with Warhorse,” he added. “No, on the contrary, Dan himself wanted to move on. He made three games that were a global success, and he has been wanting to try something different for a long time.
“Getting Kingdom Come to the screen or the screen in the next few years is another milestone that we want to achieve, and that is Dan’s new role. You won’t see him in the office every day anymore, but in a broader sense, he is still part of Warhorse.”
The studio head said a draft script has already been written for the Kingdom Come movie, and negotiations are underway with production firms, the boss claimed.
“Anyone who has played Kingdom Come or even Mafia will know Dan’s handwriting and can expect a strong story again,” Frývaldský said. “We would have to be blind if we didn’t realize how much our brand has grown. In fact, Dan Vávra’s new position could be called transmedia director. In any case, we see the film as a complement to our game creation, which can be extremely successful in its own right.”
Warhorse’s last game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, was a commercial and critical hit, selling five million copies in its first year, and receiving nominations from The Game Awards, DICE, and BAFTA. Earlier this month, an enhanced version was released for PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The original Kingdom Come: Deliverance sold 8 million copies and allowed Warhorse to double in size to more than 250 employees. In 2019, the studio was acquired by Embracer‘s Plaion.
VGC’s Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review called it “a filthy brute of an RPG”, praising its quality and its deliberate lack of polish.
“Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is an extremely confident, accomplished, dirty, hilarious, and massively enjoyable RPG,” we wrote. “The game tries a lot of things and executes on almost all of them very well, and its commitment to being ruthless must be applauded. Great visuals, vocal performances, and score put a cherry on top of a fantastic, if very mucky, cake.”
