Special Ops: We Pitch Netflix's Catan Adaptations (ft. Vic from Games Y Más)

A streaming giant just picked up one of the most beloved board games on Earth, and our imaginations ran wild. We set out to answer a big question: how do you turn Catan’s trade, tension, and that pesky robber into stories worth binging? With friend of the show Vic from Games Y Más, we pitch three directions that could each anchor a different corner of Netflix’s slate.

First up, an animated family adventure in the spirit of Toy Story and Wreck-It Ralph, where forgotten classics like Chess, Monopoly, and Risk band together to invent a game that brings people back to the table. It’s playful, castable, and built for heart. Then we scale up to a prestige fantasy series: city-states, fragile alliances, and a shadowy robber stoking conflict by shifting resources at the worst possible time. Knights ride, roads sprawl, and the seventh always hits hard. Finally, we swap armor for aviators with an 80s buddy-cop caper. Two mismatched sheriffs chase a legendary thief across ports and wheat fields, only to uncover a conspiracy that flips who’s the real villain on the island of Catan.

We don’t stop at scripted. We map out reality TV that uses the game’s DNA: survivor-style zones with public dice rolls, barter-driven challenges, and audience-powered robber events. We talk smart casting, variant spin-offs like Seafarers and Cities & Knights, and what it takes to keep the soul of Catan intact—negotiation, timing, and the thrill of a clutch trade. This is a love letter to board games, storytelling, and the weird joy of turning sheep and ore into plot.

We want your pitch. Hit play, then tell us: animated family film, political fantasy saga, buddy-cop comedy, or reality showdown? Drop your logline, tag us on Instagram or YouTube, and help decide which Catan story should get the green light. If you enjoy the show, follow, share with a friend, and leave a review so more board game fans can find us.

Chapters

• 0:16 Halloween Banter And Guest Intro
• 1:30 The Missed Vegas Meetup Story
• 3:38 Netflix Nabs Catan Rights
• 5:16 Clay’s Animated Toy-Story-Style Pitch
• 8:01 Casting The Board Game Universe
• 9:27 Vic’s Game-Of-Thrones Catan Series
• 12:45 Magic, Robbers, And World-Building
• 14:53 Travis’s 80s Buddy-Cop Catan
• 18:05 The Likely Isekai Route
• 19:11 Unscripted And Reality Show Concepts

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. They do move in herds. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Grant. A.K.A. Travis Smith. Happy Halloween, everybody, and welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. I'm joined by a herd of dinosaurs in the board game and video game sphere of influence. Joining me as always is Clayton Gable, my co-host and special guest from the Games EMoss podcast, Vic. How you doing, Vic? Oh, great, Scott.

SPEAKER_02: 0:54

I am here on time. Yes, yes, as you can tell from my Marty McFly costume here. Oh, guys, it is such an honor to be back on this podcast. I love you guys. Operation Game Night is my jam. Um, you guys are amazing. I love your deep reefs, I love everything. It just uh I'm ready to I'm ready to just get down to business and start talking. Well, we got talking here on Operation Game Night. So great, happy to be back.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19

I would like more flattery, please, Vic. There you go. Of course. Normally, normally you're good for like five minutes of flattery, and that was only 30 seconds. But no, we love you too, Vic. It was like one of the saddest things ever when I thought we were gonna meet in person at the World Series of Board Gaming.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36

Oh my goodness, bro. No, so so I don't, I don't, I don't like, you know. Hopefully, my wife doesn't listen to this episode here. Um, but I don't want to put blame on anyone, but my wife might be the reason why I wasn't able to meet up because we had a car situation, we ended up having to trade in our car, all my savings and everything I was getting ready for Vegas. I had to go to this new car. It literally happened the week before the world series of gaming, and I was just like, I was sitting there. I was literally this is what I was literally doing in my living room. I was going like this. I'm not going to the world series. I'm like, what can I do? What kind of like do I need to like sell some illegal things? Do I need to start start an only fans? Do I need to do something just to get myself over there? Cause I did not have any more money, and I was just like, so like when I told Travis, I was literally like just like I hate myself. I hate, I hate this, this, this is horrible. But here's the silver lining about that is that there'll always be more games, and we don't have to rely on world series of gaming guys. We can just shoot me a date and we'll we'll a place and we'll go, we'll meet up and have a board game getaway. We got we gotta do it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:52

Vic, I know how you could have raised the money to go to the world series of board gaming. You could have pitched the Netflix producers the next great idea for Katan the movie.

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 3:06

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:08

Before we get into our main topic, it's okay to say whatever you would like uh on this podcast because this is a safe space, and not even our wives listen to this podcast.

SPEAKER_02: 3:17

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00: 3:18

Oh wow to talk about your wife on the podcast. This is a life pre-podcast at this point.

SPEAKER_02: 3:23

There you go, there you go. Yes, yes. We're gonna be supportive, wives of uh of your husband's uh uh podcast and uh journeys and hobbies, yes. Yeah, why if our wives are the year, yep? They'll never they'll never know.

SPEAKER_00: 3:36

But we thank you, Clay, for the introduction. We do have to get to some business because uh we have some important pitches coming up. Netflix just bought the rights to Settlers of Catan. So yeah, oh man, live from Settlers of Catan or live from the Tadum blog, it's the worst, it's the worst name for a blog. Netflix bought the rights to Settlers of Catan the board game. They've done a couple board thing game board game things in the past, we'll talk about that. But if we here on this podcast are designing the next great scripted or unscripted TV animation or movie for Netflix, we are going to walk into the boardroom and pitch this to Nathan Netflix. That's not really his name, but Mr. Network. I'm like, you said that with confidence. I was like, is that his name really? No, like Nathan. He's got it, he's got a monocle and a top hat and a Stranger Things t-shirt on, and we are going to pitch him our ideas for what we think Catan should be on the next great Netflix show. So I tasked you guys to come up with your ideas for what this looks like, what you would have Netflix do with this license. RIP to Klaus Tuber, the creator of Settlers of Catan. Uh, but his sons are involved, they are part of the Catan estate, they've been working with Asmode, and they are now in cahoots with Netflix. So uh Clay, I want to I want to hear yours first. Let's let's go to yours. What do you think Netflix should do with the Catan license next?

SPEAKER_01: 5:16

Listen, I'm tapping into some pretty serious IPs here. I am thinking I'm going Toy Story, Wreck It Ralph type vibe, where the board games, the old classics, this is pre-Catan, all right. So we've got maybe chess, Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble. They're all sitting dusty on a shelf as kids, as the main family is playing more and more video games. And you know, there's some plot there where they're about to sell all the board games on this shelf in a yard sale, and they come to life, and they have to come up with a plan to bring people back to the table. And so you've got, you know, chess is a main character, Monopoly is a main character, and they come up with this great idea that the only way that they can bring people back to the table is to combine their various components and parts into this new board game that's gonna bring people back to the table, and it is Katan, the board game.

SPEAKER_02: 6:28

Pretty good, huh? We're going we're going med on this one, okay. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 6:33

Yeah, board games playing themselves, yeah, yes, yes, board games designing themselves.

SPEAKER_00: 6:41

Do you do you see this as an animated Pixar style?

SPEAKER_01: 6:47

Yes, yes, okay, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:49

Okay, so once they all combine their peep parts and pieces, who would you have do the animated voice or the voiceover for Katan the game?

SPEAKER_01: 6:59

Oh that's a good can't go wrong with Ryan Reynolds. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. I love a Ryan Reynolds voice. So if there's gonna be a hero protagonist in this movie, it's gonna be Ryan Reynolds. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 7:16

Maybe like Anya Taylor Joy for chess since she was already working on the explorer.

SPEAKER_01: 7:22

Yeah, yeah, that could be a good one. That is a great one. Get some like old crouchy guy to be like the risk general guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:33

Oh, Christopher Walken. How about Christopher Walken for uh risk for risk? Yes, I like that.

SPEAKER_02: 7:40

I like that. I have a feeling that I don't know if we should be rolling the seven of the robber.

SPEAKER_01: 7:48

Yeah, that's great. And you could even build out the you know, the antagonist of the story as like the video game consoles, whatever you know, the 90s consoles were. Maybe there's you know a power struggle within the house that you know they Catan has to like physically fight the Nintendo GameCube, and you know, they're throwing dice components at it, you know, launching them, and it's this whole thing, and then you know, at the end, the family sits down and opens the box of Catan, and it's like the rest is history. This is modern board gaming. Thank you, Klaus. Awesome. I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 8:28

Interesting only if Chris Pratt can revise his role as Mario in playing the video game, and we have Ben Schwartz that does Sonic for the same.

SPEAKER_02: 8:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. I like it. I'm so Vic.

SPEAKER_00: 8:41

Hit me with your idea. Let's hear what you came up with.

SPEAKER_02: 8:44

All right, so I like that. I like that meta version that you did, Clay there. So I'm I'm walking into this boardroom and I'm like, Mr. Mr. Nathan, love the molecule. It was really nice, it's cool, you know. But I got I got something for you here. I know you I know you it comes to my attention. You buy you know sellers of Catan. And so I got I want to pitch something in here. Let's let are you a fan? Uh Nathan, are you a fan of Game of Thrones? Would you be a happy fan of Game of Thrones? I got I got a Game of Thrones-esque kind of kind of show for you here. Like, like okay, you got these nations that come into this island, they're escaping the hardships of their country to start a new life into this land known as Catan. Nations lived in harmony, they would trade with each other, they would trade wood with each other, they would trade sheep with each other, wheat, um, build roads, build cities, they were expanding. You know, that's the main storyline. There's there's there's they're living in harmony until someone known as a robber shows up, starts stealing things, starts planting things on other nations. Maybe their wood is gone, and all of a sudden now it's on the other nation, and but they have sheep, all of a sudden more sheep, and it causes tensions between the nations, and they don't know that there's robbers going around stealing from everybody, and the nations are war starting to war against each other, starting to fight, start building tensions with each other. Now they're expanding more so they don't have control more territories, and uh, you know, we could leave it out as if they don't know that the robbers doing this behind the scenes towards the end of the show, and then you introduce the knights, and the knights come in and stuff like that. So, something along the lines of that, you know. I haven't gotten over to the to the the series ends, but uh think of that premise right there. Think of Game of Thrones fantasy esque type of style, but more obviously with more modern building cities, building villages, uh increasing, but you have that one robber that is just uh conniving and stealing things from other players from other cities, uh you could say, and so that's my pitch right there. I think I'm a big sucker for like the Game of Thrones esque type of uh uh show where, like, you know, there's uh plotting and scheming, and so I think that'd be a great way for Katan where it's like you have these these players, which are the nations, coming in, escaping, you know, kind of like how the pilgrims came in came to America, and so they're kind of over here expanding, building their lands, building their world, and then you have the robber that shows up and starts causing just chaos with everybody, and then it could be that they notice that every seventh day it happens that oh I like that on the seventh month of the seventh year that some there's like a chaotic tragedy that happens within.

SPEAKER_01: 11:17

Is it like a magic? Is there gonna be a magical thing? Is the robber like a magical character?

SPEAKER_02: 11:21

Like we could make him a magical, yeah, something like more magic where it's like no one sees him, he just pops up and disappears and moves on to a different territory. So there you go, Nathan. I I I I start I start my fee uh low as uh half a mil. We can go up there, we can talk more details.

SPEAKER_00: 11:37

There you go. If you're talking like half a mil, they they are getting a bargain because yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01: 11:45

But he'll also settle for tickets to the world series of board gaming.

SPEAKER_00: 11:48

Yes, uh yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. For life, for life, yeah. Okay, my idea was an 80s style buddy cop movie. Oh two people are the new sheriffs in town, they maybe they came from a different island or whatever, but they got word that there's a robber going around that is peddling in illegal stolen goods that are being traded under the table. And the two buddy cops are played by uh Chris Pratt and Aquafina, which I think that's like pretty appropriate roles for them. I they're accepting any role at this point, so yeah, just putting them in there. The two buddy cops. Chris Pratt is you know the the buy the books character, very much like the uh what's uh what's Will Farrell's character in uh the other guys?

SPEAKER_02: 12:41

Oh, um I mean I know I'm I know I'm a gator, but Gator.

SPEAKER_00: 12:45

Yeah, Gator knows all the rules, he's by the books, he's gonna like follow all the rules and regulations, right? Yeah, uh, and then Aquafina is kind of like the more hard, loose cop, willing to bend the rules. The robber is played by um oh man, I'm gonna forget what I wrote down. Uh Pedro Pascal.

SPEAKER_02: 13:07

I knew you were gonna say I'm out of here. I'm out of here. I knew you were gonna say that. Oh, I oh my goodness, I do not like Pedro Pascal. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00: 13:14

Hey, what again willing to accept anyone?

unknown: 13:19

Oh okay.

SPEAKER_02: 13:20

Look, I he's great, it just they're just putting him in everything.

SPEAKER_00: 13:22

I'm like, relax, like you know, come on, like he was a great Mandalorian, perfect Mandalorian, but he's not a good so as they chase uh Pedro Pascal across the island of Catan, they are starting to realize that uh the island is not what it seems, and they're undercover, they're uncovering some shady dealings where the overarching government of Catan is smuggling out sheep for other nefarious goods. And Pedro Pascal is actually the uh the do-gooder, the Robin Hood character that is helping to un unseat this government, and the two buddies realize this is a big conspiracy. Uh, supporting characters include Danny DeVito as a underground merchant, where he is also trading goods and smuggling, and uh Taiko Waititi is a seafaring captain that's going to trade any good for a much more reasonable rate. So okay, working the port. I think it's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02: 14:26

Yeah, you got a solid cast right there. I mean, minus Pedro, but you got a solid cast right there. Dang, Mr.

SPEAKER_00: 14:32

Nathan Netflix. Uh hit me up. I'm I'm yeah, let's talk. Let's talk.

SPEAKER_01: 14:37

Yes, definitely. I think they should do all of the above, really. I mean, Vic's got a good series, you know, that's got some legs to it. All right. That's I got you know a little one-off movie for the family, feel good, and Travis got maybe like a little comedy dramedy type movie.

SPEAKER_02: 14:57

The Gaetan anthology right there.

SPEAKER_00: 15:00

So here's here's probably realistically what they're gonna do. They're gonna do the whole like Isakai version. And for those of you who don't know, Isekai is like you get pulled out of your world and thrown into another one. They already did this with the werewolf property. They have a I can't remember what it's called, but it's called like Wolfpack or something. And a family gets, I think it's a French movie that they licensed for Netflix, yeah. Where a family gets pulled back in time, they are like somehow their ancestors way back when, but they're playing Werewolf. It's very strange. It was not a great movie. Um, but they kind of did that kind of Isakai, like pulled into the board game for werewolf. Yeah. Um, what about the un the unscripted TV shows? What what do you think? Like reality show? Are we just watching people play Catan? Any ideas for unscripted shows?

SPEAKER_01: 15:53

Definitely make like a good survivor-esque Netflix series out of where people have to negotiate and yes, yeah, do things like that. You you could make that happen. I like that. Yeah, you could do that. Like we're they're on the island, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:09

You just have to like survive roads, like yeah, you gotta trade with each other, then like they can vote one person, or like the the audience can vote to see who's the robber, and then they can come in and start taking things from stuff like that. I think that'd be an interesting uh reality series.

SPEAKER_00: 16:27

Um what if they did what if they did like naked and afraid, where they like somebody gets dropped in a wheat field, somebody gets dropped with like a bunch of sheep, yeah, yeah, like a ore mine, and the other person is like in a clay pit or something and has to make their own resources to trade with one another.

SPEAKER_01: 16:46

At the beginning of each episode, a die gets rolled, and the people in that area just get get their stuff. Yeah, or you I mean you almost could.

SPEAKER_02: 16:57

Yeah, they'll they'll like see it on a screen on the sky, they'll see what the number is, and they'd be like, whoever's on that, they're like, Oh step, they're getting resources this time. Yeah, that's a that could be a a a way. Um yeah, yeah, you could also go to like the competitive version where it's like you have you have you invite all these like gamers into this house, and the grand prize is like what ten thousand dollars, and you have to survive four games with Catan or something like that, and they're like whoever loses gets kicked out of the house, and you gotta keep playing until there's only like one winner. Um, or I mean, I don't know how you would do it if there's like only because I don't think you could play Catan with just two players. Um not well, yeah. I think there's a variant. Yeah, we can we can figure out the logistics later, but yeah, something like that. Something like that where it's like a competition, but like you know, people get kicked out the more you know you're losing, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00: 17:50

Yeah. I I mean there's so many variants of Catan. They have a Lord of the or not a Lord of the Rings, a Game of Thrones Catan. They have the spacefarers, they have the seafarers, they have the dragons and knights, and like there's so many different variants that they could just sprinkle into these and come up with their spin-off shows. You could do like the spacefaring one and be basically be Dune, like you have the international shippers that are controlling the galaxy and they have to be taken down from within and all like there's a thousand different things that they could pull from. I'm curious to see what they do. Uh, but if you have listened to this podcast and you are listening to our pitches, and you one of these jumps out to you, tell us which one you think it needs to be made, or tell us your idea. Comment on the YouTube, chime in on the Instagram, tell us what you think Netflix should do with the sellers of Catan IP because we're gonna make these pitches to Mr. Nathan Netflix in his Stranger Things t-shirt. They're looking for a big project. Maybe these are two-hour-long episodes, just like Stranger Things. Why not why not why build up to it? Just go straight for the two-hour episodes. So, yeah, yeah, for real. Let us know what you think. Vic, thank you for coming on. Oh man, go ahead and tell our audience where people can find Games EMoss on the internet.

SPEAKER_02: 19:04

Yeah, of course. Thank you again so much, guys. It's always such an honor and enjoy to come on the podcast, talk with you guys about board games or just whatever you guys want to chat with. I mean, yeah, uh uh you guys are awesome, great. Um, and yeah, uh, we have Games EMOS, the podcast where we're talking again, board games, uh, pop culture, video games. We love to talk at all just like how Operation Gay and I do it here. Uh, they actually do a little bit better than us, but it's cool. You know what? Uh we like to join, we like to join, and you guys are amazing, you guys are awesome. Um, but yeah, you can find us. We're on all socials just like how Operation Gay night is. We are on all social Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, uh, Apple Podcasts, um, and or uh Amazon Music. You can find us at Gamesy Must Pod. That is at Gamesy Must Pod. Uh, you can give us a like, follow there, wherever. Um, and also be sure to follow these guys. If you guys aren't following already, give them a follow. They're awesome, they're great. They're one of one of my good buddies. I love chatting with them. Anything, um, they're great. And um, and you know, Clay made me sad um when you mentioned you know, War City Gaming, but it's okay. We'll bring it back.

SPEAKER_01: 20:06

We're gonna get something together, man. We're gonna get it together.

SPEAKER_02: 20:09

We will, we will, and that's and we're gonna document all of that, by the way.

SPEAKER_01: 20:12

Yeah, when we do it'll be when we get that next Netflix money, exactly. Yeah, we'll yeah, Mr.

SPEAKER_02: 20:16

Nathan. So whenever whenever you listen to, you know, you know, I'll I'll please I'll polish, I'll polish your monocle and put it on here and give you a good declarer. Um, but yeah, yeah, you guys can find us there. And but yeah, thank you again so much for for having me on on the pod. I really enjoyed it. It's fun, it's great. And um, yeah, I don't know. Give you more prees.

SPEAKER_00: 20:34

Thank you for coming on. Thank you for your pitches to Netflix. Thank you for listening to the Operation Game Night podcast. Comment and let us know what you think Netflix should do with the Catan license for Operation Game Night. I have been Travis, he has been Clay, he has been the one and only Vic from the Games E Mod Podcast. This has been Operation Game Night, and we are out.