Crash Bandicoot may not be as popular as he used to be, but three decades ago he was one of PlayStation’s first breakout original characters. But when former Sony executive Shuji Utsumi attempted to get Hollywood interested in making a Crash Bandicoot movie, he was given the cold shoulder by film executives.

Utsumi–who is currently the CEO of Sega of America–told The Game Business about his attempt to bring Crash Bandicoot to the big screen. Despite the success of the games–from 1996 to 2010, Sony released a Crash-related game nearly every year–no one seemed to share Utsumi’s vision for what the film could be.

“When I started to get involved in the video game business, I picked up Crash Bandicoot and started asking some of the movie studios if they were interested in turning that property into a movie,” recalled Utsumi. “But I was treated like, ‘hey, video games is like a toy business.’ They didn’t really take it seriously.”

Utsumi went on to note that the Sonic the Hedgehog movies have proven to be very successful for both Hollywood–the film franchise has pulled in more than $1 billion–and for Sega itself in terms of boosting game sales and Sonic’s status as an iconic character. Crash Bandicoot, however, has seen better days. Developer Toys for Bob made Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time in 2020, but the studio reportedly canceled plans to produce Crash Bandicoot 5.

Although the Crash Bandicoot games were originally developed by Naughty Dog, the rights to the character are currently held by Microsoft after its purchase of Activision Blizzard. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann recently expressed his support for a Crash Bandicoot movie, but he also reiterated that it’s Microsoft’s call whether to actually pursue that project.

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