Indie studio KAFI has confirmed that Studiocanal is developing a feature film based on The Headliners, the developer’s co-op horror game about journalists photographing monsters across New York. The three-person team shared the news on the game’s own Steam page, framing it as a studio project rather than a film KAFI would make itself.
The Headliners launched on January 30, 2025. Teams of one to eight players take the role of reckless journalists who must capture the best possible footage of the creatures overrunning the city and make it back with a front-page image. Steam lists it as an indie action game with single-player, multiplayer, and online co-op support, along with Steam Achievements, full controller support, and family sharing.
The game sits in the same co-op horror wave as other small-team panic games, and KAFI has said its next project will move away from the “quota-likes” genre, the pressure-driven style of chasing a quota under fire that its own front-page loop embodies.
KAFI was careful about what the announcement actually means. The developer called the film “highly probable” and said it “might see the light of day,” wording that describes a development arrangement rather than a project that is financed and in production. Studiocanal approached KAFI because it loved the game and wanted to build an international movie around it. The adaptation is being handled through the European studio’s genre label, Sixth Dimension, which Variety reported in early development. No director, writer, cast, budget, distributor, or release window has been announced.
The premise is already camera-first. The Headliners is built around pointing a camera at a disaster and escaping with the best shot, a loop that carries naturally into a film. KAFI noted that a team of three is “definitely not the ones directing it” and joked that playing an extra just to be dismembered on screen would be a personal goal, though no such role is confirmed.
The same post updated players on KAFI’s next steps. After scrapping a project it had worked on for months, the team has been focused since around April on a new game it describes as “very different” from The Headliners, stepping away from horror while keeping the core idea of watching friends get destroyed. A reveal with a trailer is planned in the coming weeks. The Headliners has not been abandoned, with new content expected early next year.
