When Netflix announced it was adapting Catan in partnership with Asmodee, people didn’t really know how to react. A movie based on trading sheep, wood, and brick doesn’t sound like the next big fantasy franchise. The game doesn’t come with characters, lore, or even a story; it’s a bunch of tiles, dice, and negotiations. But that blank slate is also what makes it interesting for adaptation. Without any canon to follow, Catan can become a story about how societies start and what it takes to hold them together. Underneath the friendly gameplay is a framework for something much bigger: discovery, ambition, compromise, and the thin line between building and conquering. If handled with the right tone and placing an emphasis on being grounded, human, and focused on consequence, a Catan movie could turn simple trades into the story of civilization itself.
The Island Could Be a Character in a ‘Catan’ Movie
Every great story needs a world that matters. In Catan, that world is the island. On the screen, it could offer clear visual appeal: open landscapes, untouched nature, and the sense of something waiting to be claimed. But the island shouldn’t just sit there; it should react. It could shift and change with the people who settle it, showing the cost of every decision. Maybe deforestation changes the weather, maybe mining too deep brings up something dangerous, or maybe prosperity itself starts to rot the land. The game’s “robber” mechanic could become something larger in the film: drought, plague, rebellion. Nature and humanity are pushing back at each other. By treating the island as a living, changing presence, Catan could share the same environmental tension that makes Avatar and The Northman feel alive. The film’s emotional center wouldn’t need to rely on battles or spectacle; it would come from the settlers’ relationship with the island and how it gives them life, and how it punishes them when they take too much.
Trade, Trust, and Betrayal Are Central to ‘Catan,’ Not a Single Narrative
What makes Catan addictive isn’t rolling the dice, it’s the people across the table. It’s the tension between cooperation and competition, and that’s the part that fits perfectly on screen. The movie’s drama could come from trade and diplomacy instead of sword fights. Imagine several groups of settlers arriving from different lands, each with their own ideas about progress. They start off trading just to survive, but as the settlements grow, trust begins to crumble. Alliances form, dissolve, and reform as resources run out. “Victory points” could easily become a metaphor for power or influence. A story like this wouldn’t need war to feel tense, the conflict would live in every deal, every moment of hesitation before a trade. It’s a way to explore how ambition erodes cooperation and how survival turns people ruthless. Handled this way, Catan could explore how progress always comes with a cost. Expanding borders means someone gets pushed out. Controlling resources means controlling others. That’s where the story lives — in choices rather than spectacle. It has the potential to live in the same realm as a series like Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, stripped of the more fantastical elements to focus on the politics of a growing world.
Civilization and Myth, And An Open World To Build
If Catan works as a movie, it’ll be because it leans into its mythic potential without turning it into something cartoonish. The mechanics of the game can be reimagined as the foundation of a new world’s culture. Maybe those trades become ritual, or maybe those resources represent values in what each group thinks is worth sacrificing for. It could play as historical fantasy or even science fiction. The setting doesn’t matter as much as the theme: humanity’s instinct to build order out of chaos, and the way that order always decays. The movie doesn’t need to be bright or bleak, just honest about both. Something in the tone and scale of Arrival or Gladiator would fit: ambitious, but deeply human.
Following one generation’s effort to build a utopia, only to realize they’re repeating the same mistakes as every civilization before them, would give Catan its emotional weight. The story doesn’t have to end in tragedy, but it should end with the perspective that building something lasting always comes with a cost. At its core, Catan is about the push and pull between cooperation and control. Every trade, every expansion, every small act of greed reflects something about how societies grow and collapse. Where most game adaptations struggle to squeeze into a pre-written mythology, Catan starts with the freedom of choice. Just as it has been on tabletops for decades, the filmmakers have the chance here to build their own mythology within the world. The game’s lack of story isn’t a problem, it’s the point. It’s a map that’s waiting to be filled in. And if Netflix and its filmmakers recognize that, Catan could surprise everyone in the future, not as a loud, blockbuster adaptation, but as a quiet story about how civilization begins, and how easily it breaks.
