Josh Cooley to Write 99 Nights in the Forest Film for 20th Century Studios
20th Century Studios has hired Josh Cooley to write a live-action film based on 99 Nights in the Forest. Live action means real actors and sets rather than animation. The studio has picked up theatrical film rights to the game, which covers a cinema release, in what will be its first feature adaptation of a video game, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The game comes from Grandma's Favourite Games and is hosted on Roblox, the online platform where users create and play games. It is an action-survival game, a type built around exploration, resource gathering and combat. Players must endure 99 nights in a haunted forest while rescuing four lost children and fighting creatures in the woods. The game was introduced in 2025.
Its audience is huge. It ranked as the seventh-most-played game of all time on Roblox as of spring, according to 20th Century Studios. It has drawn nearly 26 billion lifetime visits and holds a player rating of 90.6 percent.
The studio met with several writers over the summer to hear pitches before choosing Cooley. He co-wrote Pixar's Inside Out, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay in 2016. He then won the Academy Award for best animated feature in 2020 for Toy Story 4, which was his feature film directorial debut.
He also directed Transformers One, the first fully CG-animated Transformers film. CG means computer-generated, with characters and worlds built in software. Its voice cast included Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key and Jon Hamm.
Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are on board as producers of the new film. Alec Kieft, Matthew Hufton and Cameron Angland of Grandma's Favourite Games will serve as executive producers, a senior credit often tied to creative oversight and rights. Romel Adam and Jose Cañas are also executive producers. Cooley is represented by WME, Untitled Entertainment and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.
What makes this stand out is the speed of the move. A game introduced last year now has a cinema project in development with an Oscar-winning writer attached and horror veterans producing.
