RuneScape is moving beyond the game client. Jagex has announced that an animated series based on the long-running MMO is now in development with creator Charlie “MoistCr1TiKaL” White and Lyrical Animation.
The project was revealed at RuneFest in Birmingham during RuneScape’s 25th anniversary year. In its official announcement, Jagex said the series will explore bringing the world of Gielinor to the screen, with more details expected in 2027.
RuneScape is becoming a wider entertainment world
The important part is not simply that RuneScape is getting an adaptation. It is that Jagex is treating the franchise as something that can support multiple forms of participation beyond playing the MMO.
RuneScape first launched in 2001 as a browser-based online game. Since then, its world has expanded through the modern RuneScape, Old School RuneScape and RuneScape: Dragonwilds. Jagex says the franchise has welcomed more than 300 million player accounts and generated more than $3 billion in lifetime revenue across its two main games.
That gives the proposed series something many game adaptations lack: a large archive of characters, factions, quests and player-created mythology. Gielinor is not an empty setting waiting for a story. It is a world that an existing community has been interpreting for 25 years.
Jagex is also pairing that established world with a creator whose audience already lives across platforms. White has more than 25 million followers across his channels and platforms, according to the announcement, while his content generates approximately 145 million monthly views. His role connects the franchise to the creator economy without making the project a simple influencer cameo.
Lyrical Animation is producing the series alongside White’s Meatier Productions. The same studio is working with White on Godslap, an animated feature based on the graphic novel he co-created, and is also involved in adaptations of Death Stranding and Bloodborne.
The creator is part of the distribution logic
White’s involvement matters because modern entertainment franchises increasingly need more than a recognizable name. They need a route into an audience before the first trailer arrives.
RuneScape already has a durable fanbase, but an animated series asks the brand to behave differently. The game can rely on systems, progression and player memory. A television project needs characters, pacing and a narrative point of view that works for people who have never logged into Gielinor.
That is where a creator-led partnership becomes strategically useful. White brings an audience, a history with internet culture and an existing relationship with the animation studio. Jagex brings the world, the characters and the community that gives the property its value. The partnership is designed to reduce the distance between fandom, creator attention and new audience discovery.
It also reflects a broader shift in how entertainment companies think about creators. Creators are no longer only promotional channels placed around a finished product. They are increasingly being invited into development, production and adaptation because their audience relationship can help shape how an established property travels.
There is still plenty that has not been decided. Jagex has not confirmed a release window, platform, cast or episode count. Development is at an early stage, so the announcement is better understood as a direction of travel than a finished entertainment product.
That direction is clear enough. RuneScape is being built as a broader ecosystem of connected experiences, and the animated series gives Jagex a way to introduce Gielinor to people who may never approach it through an MMO. The challenge will be making the show feel like a story rather than a two-hour advertisement for a game.
For brands and platforms watching the move, the lesson is less about adapting every piece of intellectual property for television. It is about finding the right combination of durable world, active community and creator distribution. RuneScape has all three. Now the series has to prove they can work together on screen.