Have you ever thought to yourself, boy, I sure would like a Duke Nukem TV series? Well you might be getting one anyway, as Adi Shankar, producer of the Devil May Cry and Castlevania shows on Netflix, said in an interview with Esquire that he's acquired the rights to make one.
Most of the interview is about how Shankar ended up doing Devil May Cry—apparently Capcom suggested it and Shankar, who said he's been a fan since 2001, leapt at the opportunity—his approach to making the show, and animation in general. But near the end, it veers into what he's got cooking for the future.
"I got videogames in production. Obviously more Devil May Cry," Shankar said. "I'm being approached with different IPs and companies that want to work with me. I bought the rights to Duke Nukem. Not the gaming rights, but I bought it from Gearbox."
His vision for Duke Nukem, he continued, is "a middle finger to everybody."
"When Duke Nukem blew up, a bunch of people sat around trying to turn it into a brand, when it's just a middle finger. Duke Nukem can't be made by a corporation, because the moment a corporation makes Duke Nukem, it's no longer Duke Nukem. I don't intend on having anyone tell me what to do on this one."
Duke Nukem 3D is a fantastic FPS, as good as any shooter to come out of the groundbreaking days of the mid-1990s. It's also the only genuinely good Duke Nukem game ever made: The first two games in the series are standard Apogee platforming fare—perfectly fine, but no Commander Keen—and what's followed in the years since has careened between unremarkable and outright bad. But for some reason, the legend of Duke Nukem—that it's a much-loved pop-culture touchstone, rather than a poorly-aged flash in the pan—persists.
Which isn't to say a Duke Nukem TV series (or a new videogame, for that matter) will inevitably be bad. PC Gamer's Robert Jones shared some ideas in 2023 about how Duke could be resurrected in ways that don't suck, and I agree pretty much across the board: Duke could work very well as an Austin Powers-style send-up of testosterone-drenched action heroes.
But that would require three things: An understanding and acknowledgement that Duke Nukem in his post-3D iteration doesn't work; a willingness to ignore the small but surely very vocal minority who thinks it does work, or at least that changing it would be some kind of sacrilege; and smart, sharp writing to make it actually happen.
Could Shankar pull all that together? Maybe—the Devil May Cry and Castlevania series were both well received, and Shankar showed a willingness to change things up for DMC that didn't leave some fans entirely happy (but did earn it a second season). Anything's possible, I suppose. Hell, sign Alan Ritchson up for it and I might even tune in.
As for why he'd want to bother trying in the first place, Shankar alluded to that earlier in the interview when he talked about taking on Devil May Cry.
"I didn't want the biggest thing," he said. "Don't give me Street Fighter or Assassin's Creed. I was a fan of so many things that disappeared and I was in a position of power to bring them back. I could make more Dino Crisis! And if I blow up Dino Crisis into Jurassic Park, I should do that."
And in case you'd forgotten, as I had, this isn't the first time someone has floated the idea of pulling Duke out of the world of videogames: In 2022, Legendary Entertainment picked up the rights to do a Duke Nukem movie. A persistent legend indeed.
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