The American box office has recently experienced a massive amount of success. The 2026 summer box office was the biggest of all time, which is huge to think about. It was buoyed by successes like Toy Story 5, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, The Odyssey, and earlier in the year films like Backrooms and Obsession. Yet despite these successes, projects are still getting greenlit that are absolute wastes of money. Like a Crazy Taxi film, for example.
Now, to be fair, this project we’re about to discuss is being developed for Netflix and not one of the major film production studios. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to get a potential theatrical release. The point is more about why this movie is getting greenlit at all.
Crazy Taxi is one of many dead franchises Sega has in its stable. Lately, the company has been trying to resurrect certain titles in different ways. For example, they recently put out a damn good Shinobi game. Sega also announced a movie in the franchise two years ago. Why a movie, though? There’s nothing substantial about the Shinobi game franchise to warrant a movie. You can make any movie about ninjas and basically capture the essence of the games without the IP. But sadly, the film and television production business feels more comfortable with existing IP than trying something new. Even if that IP is hardly culturally relevant.
Meanwhile, a Crazy Taxi movie has even less reason to exist. The game series started in 1999 in the arcade. That original release was huge for a good reason too. The Crazy Taxi formula is pretty simple. You play as a taxi driver in a city resembling San Francisco. You have a set amount of time to pick up and deliver as many fares as possible. Picking up a fare adds time to your clock. You also get monetary bonuses the faster and safer you get people to their destination. Keep playing until time runs out. Oh, and all of this happens to a soundtrack featuring Bad Religion and The Offspring.
There is no reason at all that this has to be a movie. But, somehow and someway, it’s happening. Dan Gregor and Doug Mand have been tapped to write it. They previously worked on the script for 2025’s reboot of The Naked Gun. That film was a bit uneven, but at least it had more material to work with than a game about a fast taxi. This could also partly be a marketing ploy by Sega who has an upcoming Crazy Taxi game set for 2027. Could be mighty nice to have a game and a movie coming out in fairly close proximity. That still doesn’t make it a good idea.
The reason why the 2026 summer box office was so successful was that it actually featured movies people wanted to see. They wanted to see a new Spider-Man. It was intriguing to see what Christopher Nolan would do with The Odyssey. People wanted to see indie horror from newcomers to the industry. Nobody wants to see Crazy Taxi. And in this case, it doesn’t matter if it’s on the big screen or Netflix.
Netflix has its own problem with trying to maintain a library that people actually want to watch. Their original films are often intensely expensive and come and go out of the news cycle without fanfare. The original Netflix series tend to last two seasons at most and then get canned. Throwing money at a project no one cares about is not going to help them. It’s also taking away resources from potential projects that could be far more deserving of the spotlight.
The other ridiculous thing Sega and Netflix are missing is that Crazy Taxi as an arcade game was the kind of game you played for 10 minutes, and that was enough. Maybe you’d come back to it every now and again, but it’s the kind of game that exists for short bursts of enjoyment. A movie would run a lot longer than most people’s combined playtime of the game. Hell, Mortal Kombat II didn’t even come close to making a profit in theaters. What makes anyone think Crazy Taxi is going to be worth anything at all, even on a streaming platform?
