Netflix’s Persona Live-Action Series: Story Kitchen’s Real Role

Netflix is developing a live-action Persona TV series, with Christopher Monfette, the writer behind Star Trek: Picard and 9-1-1, attached to write the show and serve as its showrunner, and Shawn Levy executive producing through his 21 Laps banner. The package, first reported by Variety on June 29, 2026, hands Netflix a 30-year-old Japanese role-playing franchise for a live-action adaptation that will sit alongside its existing roster of game-based projects, including The Witcher, Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and the animated Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Netflix declined Variety’s request to comment on the development.

What the headlines framed as a Netflix and Levy development is, on the producing credit sheet, a three-way package involving Story Kitchen and SEGA. Story Kitchen, a Burbank-based production company, is co-producing the Persona series alongside 21 Laps, with SEGA’s Toru Nakahara executive producing on the publisher’s behalf. Most of the recognizable names in the gaming-to-Hollywood boom of the past decade run through Story Kitchen or its predecessor dj2 Entertainment, and the Persona package reads as another notch in that single playbook.

What Netflix Actually Ordered

Variety broke the development on June 29, 2026, framing it as a live-action TV series based on the Persona franchise rather than any single entry. Christopher Monfette is writing the series and serving as showrunner and executive producer. Shawn Levy and Robert Atwood executive produce for 21 Laps, the production company behind Stranger Things and Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine. Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Michael Lawrence Goldberg, and Timothy I. Stevenson join as executive producers, alongside SEGA’s Toru Nakahara.

No release date, casting, or plot angle has been announced. Persona 5 introduced fans to the Phantom Thieves when the game launched in 2016, with Persona 5 Royal expanding that story in 2024, so the writing room has an obvious on-ramp. Variety’s report left the source material open, which means the show could pull from one game, draw across the whole franchise, or attempt an entirely new story.

Monfette’s track record is a mix of sci-fi and procedural work. Star Trek: Picard placed him inside a legacy-franchise adaptation, which is closer to the Persona project than almost any other active Hollywood job. 9-1-1 gave him procedural pacing for character-driven hour-long episodes. Neither credit announces a JRPG-fluent writer on its own, though the spread reads as deliberate for a series that will need to balance supernatural action with high-school coming-of-age drama.

The Broker the Press Release Skipped

Story Kitchen has put itself at the center of video-game-to-screen adaptation before this deal was announced. The company bills itself on its own site as the “premier production company specializing as Franchise Farmers through the adaptation of videogames and other ‘non-traditional’ IPs into FILM and TV,” and the catalog backstops the marketing language. The active and announced adaptations on Story Kitchen’s books include Tomb Raider (Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix), It Takes Two (Amazon MGM Studios), Just Cause (Universal), Sifu (Netflix), Streets of Rage (Lionsgate), Shinobi (Universal), ToeJam & Earl (Amazon MGM Studios), Split Fiction (Amazon MGM Studios), and Ruiner (Universal), on top of SEGA’s live-action Sonic the Hedgehog films.

Dmitri M. Johnson has been at the forefront of successfully connecting videogame IP to Hollywood long before it became mainstream.

Johnson co-founded Story Kitchen in 2022 with Mike Goldberg, after running dj2 Entertainment, the production company that produced the Sonic films and a generation of game-to-screen projects. The Hollywood ecosystem is full of single-game adaptation deals. Story Kitchen’s pitch is a portfolio running eight or more titles in parallel across multiple studios. Persona joining Netflix is one more project on that assembly line, with the same producers, similar deal mechanics, and SEGA on both sides of the table.

The 21 Laps-Netflix relationship is doing structural work here, too. 21 Laps holds an overall TV deal with Netflix, per the deal terms circulated with the Persona announcement. That relationship recently ended with Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season, which IGN notes wrapped late last year. Story Kitchen, by contrast, holds a television first-look deal at Amazon MGM Studios and an animated film first-look deal at DreamWorks Animation. Picking Netflix for Persona, then, is a deliberate cross-studio choice, not a default routing.

Persona at 30: The Numbers Behind the IP

Persona is one of a small handful of Japanese role-playing franchises that has crossed from niche import to a mainstream global audience. The series has grown into a stack of console releases, mobile spin-offs, and remakes since its first entry, with Persona 5 introducing fans to the Phantom Thieves when it launched in 2016 and Persona 5 Royal expanding that story in 2024, per IGN. Persona 4 Revival is on SEGA’s calendar for February 18, 2027, and Persona 6 sits on the same page as the next mainline entry.

• Series debut: Revelations: Persona, PlayStation, September 20, 1996 (per SEGA’s Persona 30th anniversary portal)
• Latest mainline release: Persona 5 Royal, 2024 (per IGN)
• Lifetime franchise sales: Over 30 million copies worldwide (per SEGA’s Persona 30th anniversary portal)
• Upcoming mainline release: Persona 4 Revival, dated February 18, 2027 (per SEGA’s Persona 30th anniversary portal)
• Next numbered entry: Persona 6, billed as the next mainline entry (per SEGA’s Persona 30th anniversary portal)

That footprint puts Persona in a clear tier below Mario, Pokémon, and Final Fantasy in Western commercial terms and well ahead of most Japanese role-playing IPs. The numbers explain why streaming adaptation interest arrived well before Netflix signaled it. A 30-year run, six-plus mainline entries, and a deep installed base of players who show up for spin-offs and remakes make Persona unusually friendly territory for a Netflix-sized writers’ room.

Why Shawn Levy, Monfette, and Why Now

The package leans on Netflix’s 21 Laps relationship rather than any prior Persona adaptation. 21 Laps holds an overall TV deal with Netflix, and the same banner wrapped Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season, which IGN says ended late last year. Levy directed or co-directed episodes of that final run, alongside co-writing and directing Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine. His next directing chair is Star Wars: Starfighter, per IGN.

Monfette is the less-recognized half of the writing tandem on this series. IGN identifies him as a Star Trek: Picard and 9-1-1 alumnus who is now writing and running the Persona show. Star Trek: Picard placed him inside a legacy-franchise adaptation, the closest existing parallel to a Persona live-action project. 9-1-1 gave him procedural-pacing muscle for character-driven hour-long episodes. None of the credits name a JRPG-fluent writer outright, but the variety reads as deliberate for a series that will need supernatural action in the same room as high-school coming-of-age drama.

There is no Netflix release date, no casting, and no plot confirmation beyond the franchise pick itself. Variety’s original report did not say which Persona game the series will follow, if any. Net result: a news-cycle launch with a multi-year development runway that gives the writers’ room room to swing.

The Hard Part of Live-Action Persona

Persona is a difficult franchise to translate to live-action television, and the difficulty starts with its visual grammar. The series trades on stylized anime aesthetics, summoning sequences that visualize internal states, and a high-school social-simulation layer that depends on calendar-based gameplay. None of those survive a literal screen translation. Netflix’s existing track record with stylized, anime-rooted or game-rooted adaptations is mixed and includes The Witcher, Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. 21 Laps’ recent Backrooms film leaned even harder into heightened surrealism, suggesting the same shop can pursue the visual register Persona demands.

The adaptation calculation hinges on whether the writers lean on Persona 5’s heist-driven Phantom Thieves conceit, which is the most exportable angle, or attempt to honor the franchise’s full thematic range, including dungeon-crawling and slice-of-life segments. Neither choice is automatically right. The depth of the source material argues for ambition, and the long development runway gives Monfette room to do his work. Persona landing at Netflix, in other words, is one of the more ambitious JRPG adaptation pitches of recent years.

How Story Kitchen’s Gaming-IP Pipeline Reads Now

The Persona deal slots into a Story Kitchen pipeline that already runs across Amazon MGM, Netflix, Universal, and Lionsgate. Several of those projects share IP owners with Persona at SEGA, which is part of why Story Kitchen’s role as broker is more specific than a simple vendor arrangement. The company has co-production relationships with multiple streamers and studios that allow projects to move between shop-floor producers. Persona joining Netflix’s slate is a deliberate cross-studio move for a shop that is more often cited on Amazon-linked projects.

Beyond Persona, Story Kitchen’s active and announced video-game adaptations include:

• Tomb Raider (Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix)
• It Takes Two (Amazon MGM Studios, with Dwayne Johnson attached)
• Just Cause (Universal)
• Sifu (Netflix)
• Streets of Rage (Lionsgate)
• Shinobi (Universal)
• ToeJam & Earl (Amazon MGM Studios)
• Split Fiction (Amazon MGM Studios)
• Ruiner (Universal)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA live-action films)
• Life is Strange (announced)

Reading the slate, Persona is Story Kitchen’s first JRPG after a run of action, adventure, and platformer adaptations. The same shop that made SEGA’s hedgehog a multi-film franchise now has access to SEGA’s flagship RPG line, including Persona 6 still in development at Atlus. That places Story Kitchen inside the publisher’s wider Western expansion plans, not just its live-action TV ambitions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is writing Netflix’s live-action Persona series?

Christopher Monfette, who has writing credits on Star Trek: Picard and 9-1-1, is writing the show and serving as its showrunner and executive producer. Shawn Levy, Robert Atwood, Dmitri M. Johnson, Michael Lawrence Goldberg, and Timothy I. Stevenson of Story Kitchen, and SEGA’s Toru Nakahara, are all attached as executive producers. Emily Feher oversees the project for 21 Laps, per the deal terms announced with the development.

When does Netflix’s Persona series come out?

Netflix has not announced a release date. The series is in early development and remains in the script and writers’ room phase, per Variety’s original report. As a baseline, similar Netflix game-adaptation projects have taken multiple years from initial announcement to on-screen debut.

Will the Netflix Persona show follow Persona 5?

Neither Variety nor IGN has disclosed the source material. Persona 5 introduced fans to the Phantom Thieves when it launched in 2016, and Persona 5 Royal expanded that story in 2024, so the most recent mainline entry has the largest installed base. The series could pull from a specific game, draw across the whole franchise, or attempt an original story.

Is Persona 6 coming out?

SEGA’s 30th-anniversary portal lists Persona 6 as the next mainline entry, describing it as “the long-awaited Persona 6.” No release date was listed when SEGA posted the entry. Atlus is separately developing Persona 4 Revival for release on February 18, 2027.

Where does Persona 4 Revival fit in?

Persona 4 Revival is a separate Atlus project on SEGA’s calendar for February 18, 2027. It is a game, not the Netflix series, and is being developed independently of both Persona 6 and the live-action TV show at Netflix.

The next data point from the deal will be a script order or, more likely, a writers’ room announcement. Until then, the Persona package sits inside Hollywood’s game-to-screen assembly line, with SEGA producer Toru Nakahara attached to keep the publisher’s interests aligned and Netflix’s slate expansion running through Story Kitchen’s videogame adaptation catalog. For readers tracking Netflix’s wider gaming push, the mobile-controlled horror game Netflix is launching June 30, 2026 shows how that same gaming strategy plays out on the games-and-experiences side.