Asmodee unveils Ticket to Ride Netflix deal in ongoing push to get its best-selling games onto the big screen

Asmodee‘s push to get its best-known board games turned into films and television shows continues, with streaming giant Netflix picking up exclusive global rights for screen-based adaptations of the huge-selling Ticket to Ride series.

The deal, which covers “scripted and unscripted projects” across film, television series, and other formats, comes four months after Asmodee agreed a similar deal with Netflix for screen adaptations of its fellow bestseller Catan – a 45 million-selling title which has already successfully broken out from the hobby board gaming space and into wider pop culture.

Asmodee said a feature film based on Ticket to Ride is already in development, written by Ben Mekler and Chris Amick – the Kung Fu Panda animated series writers who previously prepared a movie pitch for Leder Games’ breakout title Root.

The company added that the Ticket to Ride deal reinforces it strategy to “broaden the reach of its tabletop games IPs, from the gaming tables around the world to millions of screens”.

Alan R Moon, the designer of the 20-million-selling Ticket to Ride series, will be an executive producer on Netflix’s planned titles as part of the partnership agreement.

He said, “Just when I thought life couldn’t get more exciting, Ticket to Ride is teaming up with Netflix. I can’t wait to help bring these exciting projects to the millions of fans of the game.”

Details of the upcoming film’s plot are yet to be revealed, although the game itself does feature a storyline at the beginning of the rulebook which may provide clues to the movie’s direction.

That story involves several friends meeting each year to celebrate the anniversary of Phileas Fogg’s successful trip around the world in 80 days – and agreeing a $1m wager in their 1900 gathering to see which of them can travel by rail to the most cities in North America within seven days.

Netflix first teamed up with Asmodee in 2022, when the board game giant worked in the other direction to create a trio of titles based on Netflix shows Squid Game, Stranger Things and Ozark.

Those games have been followed by a Bridgerton-themed version of Love Letter, while Netflix brought Asmodee’s creations to screens for the first time in 2024 with French film Family Pack, which is based on the Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow card game.

That movie has a 38% audience rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, however, and other tabletop-based films from the last couple of decades have experienced very mixed success.

Hasbro’s 2008 deal with Universal Pictures to make a series of films based on the company’s toy and game brands ended two years early, after 2012 release Battleship bombed at the box office.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves performed better on its 2023 release given its lower development budget, and was well-regarded by both audiences and critics, but there has been no word from Hasbro about a sequel to date.

That movie’s writing pair, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, were tapped up last year to work on a big-screen adaptation of veteran board game title Monopoly, which has been in development for more than a decade.

Netflix’s other adaptations of tabletop and video game titles in recent years have included an adult animated fantasy comedy based on Asmodee-owned Exploding Kittens, as well as adaptations of Arcane and Castlevania and upcoming series based on Assassin’s Creed and Monopoly – the latter of which is a live-action competition.

Other recent partnership deals from Asmodee aimed at expanding awareness of its games have included teaming up with a major professional sports franchise for the first time in the form of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves.

That deal sees Catan introduce “interactive concourse activations” at some of the Timberwolves home games this season, with Asmodee saying the move would give fans the opportunity to “test their strategy, challenge friends, and take home exclusive Catan giveaways and prizes”.

Asmodee was also busy last year with the first moves in its reignited acquisitions strategy, picking up the Zombicide IP from financially-troubled board game publisher CMON in June and the Cthulhu: Death May Die IP from the same company in October.

The board game giant also recently announced a new party games studio, Moodbox Publishing, as part of a push into the US mass market, and a dedicated kids-focused brand ahead of the release of a slate of re-worked, simpler and shorter versions of some of its most popular titles.

Asmodee is set to reveal its latest quarterly earnings tomorrow, covering the final three months of 2026 – including the hugely-important Christmas period.

The company’s last quarterly results, for July to September 2025, saw it achieve sales of more than €400m – up more than 20% on the same period last year.