When it comes to intellectual property, Jeff Bezos wants to make it into a movie. Amazon's next planned film adaptation is Sega's 1990s hip-hop-themed roguelike game ToeJam & Earl, recently revived in 2019's ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove (opens in new tab).

Discovered by The Hollywood Reporter (opens in new tab), the film is a collaboration between NBA superstar Stephen Curry's Unanimous Media and John Wick creator Derek Kolstad and Amazon Studios in collaboration with Story Kitchen, a media company headed by Sonic the Hedgehog producer Dmitri Johnson. What a potent mixture.

Personally, I'm hoping that the resulting feature film will somehow manage to pull all these disparate threads together into a cleverly choreographed rap-centric action film, with a basketball component and an appearance by Sonic the Hedgehog. Alas, it will probably turn out to be an ordinary movie.

The screenplay will be written by Nunzio Randazzo and Amos Vernon, who recently worked on Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. The film centers on Tujam and Earl's search for a cure for a disease that is ravaging the funk level of their home planet. For their mission, they travel to Earth, "the place where the music that created their culture was born."

Far from being Amazon's only current game-related film project, it may be the most out-of-field choice the company has ever made. Amazon is also producing films and TV shows based on Blade Runner, Fallout, Mass Effect, Disco Elysium, and Life is Strange. A film derived from a '90s roguelike about a rapping alien who collects spaceship parts is a bit of an odd duck in that collection, but not unwelcome.