Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of The Settlers of Catan is starting to take shape, with the popular board game officially one step closer to becoming a live-action movie. The streaming service has tapped a film-making duo to director the film — the first official move from the project since it was announced.
According to a new report from Deadline, Aaron and Adam Nee will write and direct a live-action Catan movie for Netflix. The brothers are best known for directing The Lost City, the 2022 action-adventure comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Netflix has not publicly commented on the report.
The project marks Netflix’s first major move since securing the exclusive global rights to Catan in October 2025. The agreement covers considerably more than a single movie, with the streamer also able to develop animated films, scripted television, unscripted projects, and video games based on the franchise.
What would a Catan movie look like?
Originally released in 1995 as The Settlers of Catan, the board game was created by Klaus Teuber and has sold more than 45 million copies worldwide. Players compete to develop settlements on the fictional island of Catan, collecting resources, trading with opponents, building roads, and expanding their territories.
Exactly how Netflix intends to translate those mechanics into a feature-length story remains unclear. Aaron and Adam Nee have worked across several genres, giving Netflix a few different directions to consider for its Catan adaptation.
The Lost City follows a romance novelist who gets caught up in a dangerous jungle treasure hunt after being kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire. The brothers also directed Band of Robbers (2015), a modern crime-comedy reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That film takes familiar characters and places them in a considerably different setting, something worth considering given that Catan doesn’t have an established narrative for filmmakers to follow.
The Nee brothers have also been involved in other adaptations, including writing Masters of the Universe and an upcoming Netflix spy movie starring Kevin Hart and Henry Cavill.
Netflix could approach Catan as a traditional fantasy adventure, a story about rival settlements competing for control of an island, or even a more politically driven tale about trade. Whether the adaptation will retain the board game’s lighter game-night tone or take its fictional setting in a more serious direction remains to be seen.
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