20th Century Studios boss David Greenbaum called the developers at Grandma's Favourite Games “exactly the kind of bold, imaginative creators we love working with” and now the studio is putting its money behind that sentiment.
Disney's 20th Century Studios has secured the rights to develop a film based on 99 Nights in the Forest, one of the most-played games on Roblox. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 20th Century won the deal in a competitive bidding process, though neither the other parties involved nor the price paid were disclosed.
From haunted forest to Hollywood
99 Nights in the Forest is a survival game developed by Grandma's Favourite Games and released on Roblox in March 2025. The premise is straightforward and genuinely unsettling: survive 99 nights in a haunted forest, fight monsters, and rescue missing children. Simple enough on paper, but clearly something clicked with players.
The numbers are hard to ignore. The game has logged more than 25.9 billion visits since launch, peaked at 14.2 million concurrent players (ranking it No. 3 all-time for peak concurrents on the platform), and was still pulling over 174,000 simultaneous players as of April 14. For a game that's barely a year old, that's a trajectory very few titles ever hit.
What the deal actually looks like right now
Here's the thing: this is early. The project has no director attached, no writer, and no release window. What it does have are executive producers in the form of the game's three creators, Alec Kieft, Matthew Hufton, and Cameron Angland, who will carry that role into the film.
For 20th Century, this would mark the studio's first video game adaptation since Disney acquired Fox's entertainment assets. The studio has prior form in the space, having previously produced both Hitman and Assassin's Creed, though neither exactly set the world on fire critically.
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99 Nights in the Forest is the third Roblox-hosted game to land a Hollywood deal in recent months, following Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot.
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Roblox as a content pipeline
This deal is part of a pattern worth paying attention to. Roblox is quietly becoming a legitimate source of IP for Hollywood, with multiple games on the platform now in various stages of development as films. The platform's massive, young audience makes it an attractive proving ground: if tens of millions of players are already emotionally invested in a world, the audience acquisition problem is at least partially solved before a movie even enters production.
The key here is that 99 Nights in the Forest isn't a brand-extension deal for an existing franchise. It's a game built entirely within Roblox by a small independent team that grew into something enormous on its own terms. That's a different story than adapting a legacy IP, and it's one Hollywood is clearly paying attention to.
For everything else happening across gaming right now, check out the latest gaming news and browse more guides. The 99 Nights in the Forest movie has a long road ahead, but with 20th Century behind it and a built-in audience in the hundreds of millions, it's a project that will be worth tracking closely.
