EXCLUSIVE: Stories International Tomoya Suzuki and filmmakers Steve Pink and Jeff Morris are collaborating on a film adaptation of Rent a Hero, the Sega video game about a slacker genius who joins a high-tech start-up that is pitched as a company to improve people’s lives but is nothing as it seems. When company insiders plan to weaponize the technology, the slacker and his fellow Rent-a-Heroes must band together to stop them.

Pink, whose credits include Hot Tub Time Machine, High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank, will direct and is penning the project with Morris, who wrote the upcoming Netflix action-adventure The True Memoirs of an International Assassin starring Kevin James.

Suzuki and Hakuhodo DY Group will produce. Suzuki is the president and CEO of Stories International, the production arm and joint venture of video game brand Sega Group and Hakuhodo DY Group. Evan J. Cholfin of Stories International will oversee the project as executive producer.

Stories International is currently producing multiple film, TV and digital projects based on Sega intellectual properties, including the beloved game franchises Shinobi with producer Marc Platt, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Virtua Fighter, The House of the Dead, Streets of Rage and Crazy Taxi. Their plan is to co-develop adaptations of these properties as English-language feature films, television and digital series for worldwide release.

Pink and Morris — who set up Cop Swap at MGM, The Yank at Sony and Shore Leave at DreamWorks — are repped by UTA. Suzuki and Stories International are repped by CAA.