Paramount’s Golden Axe Becomes Early Streaming Hit of 2026

Mike McMahan was working as a script doctor on the Sonic the Hedgehog movies when a Sega executive approached him and asked if there were any other properties the game studio owned that he would want to adapt into a series.

Sega has been making video games since 1973 and owns the rights to everything from modern hit franchises like Yakuza and Persona to arcade mainstays like Crazy Taxi and Streets of Rage. McMahan chose Golden Axe.

“I’m very old,” McMahan tells Polygon by way of explaining his somewhat surprising choice. “When the NES came out, that was amazing for me, and before then, I played an insane amount of Golden Axe.”

Golden Axe is a series of beat-’em-up fantasy video games released by Sega. The first one debuted in 1989 as an arcade cabinet. Seven sequels and spinoffs followed, with the last being 1995’s Golden Axe: The Duel, though a new game was announced by Sega at the 2023 Game Awards and remains in development.

McMahan’s memory of the game dates back to a Chicago summer camp where Golden Axe and a few other arcade cabinets were rigged up so children could play them for free.

“When you’re a kid, everything gets magnified,” he says. “For a lot of people, Golden Axe isn’t a big deal, but for this motherfucker, it was a huge deal.”

Series co-creator Joe Chandler, who also serves as showrunner, sees another advantage to adapting a property like Golden Axe. While the game world may seem like standard high fantasy, it contains bizarre, half-defined characters and settings that give writers room to explore.

“You have all this weird stuff,” Chandler says, “like the guy you kick for potions.”

“There are these big visual signposts — a village on the back of a turtle or an eagle — that makes it really fun to adapt. You get to explore what those things are without the game having it be super dictated beat by beat. In a modern game, Eagle Village would be really well explained. In this game, it’s just a thing. That allows for some creative freedom.”

All 10 episodes of Golden Axe season 1 are streaming now on Paramount Plus. Ahead of the show release, Polygon spoke to McMahan and Chandler about how they adapted a 37-year-old game into an animated comedy and their potential Sega crossover plans for season 2.

“Obviously, we have to address this issue”

The premise of the original Golden Axe game is simple. The villain Death Adder captures the King of Yuria and takes control of the magical Golden Axe to rule the land. Players choose one of three warriors: the sword-wielding barbarian Ax Battler, the Amazonian Tyris Flare, or the dwarf Gilius Thunderhead.

“You have this big buff Conan guy, this Amazon warrior, and this little green dwarf,” Chandler says. “We both just always picked the dwarf.”

The games never explore the disparity between those three heroes, but the animated series leans into it immediately.

“Gilius is the third greatest warrior in the world, but he’s with the two others, so he never feels appreciated,” Chandler says. This gave the show a natural starting point as those feelings of resentment bubble up and Gilius, voiced by Matthew Rhys, sets out on his own adventure. “It was a way in that felt really honest. It feels like a real story to tell in this world.”

For Ax Battler, voiced by Liam McIntyre, the writers targeted the absurdity of a character with “ax” in his name who fights primarily with a giant sword.

McMahan calls the choice crazy, and Chandler notes it was on their initial writers’ room checklist to address the issue.

For McMahan, the misnaming highlights a strange streak running through the Golden Axe franchise, particularly in Americanized versions of the games.

“There’s almost an art appreciation of reading through the manuals and starting to realize what the translators did,” he says.

Boss battles in the localized U.S. version of Golden Axe are named after beer brands, including Bud Brothers and Lt. Heineken. McMahan notes that modern big-budget video games would not attempt similar choices today.

“It used to be that everything wasn’t so corporate,” McMahan says. “Now, everything is so figured out.”

“They’re enjoying getting their little butts kicked”

Tyris Flare, voiced by Lisa Gilroy, receives minimal character development, though an early episode features her noting that her battle bikini covers too little skin. The series instead focuses on Hampton Squib, voiced by Danny Pudi, an inexperienced adventurer who tags along with Gilius.

Thieves from the original video game receive a deeper backstory in the show. In the games, attacking these gnome-like creatures causes them to drop magic pots that replenish character abilities.

“If you’ve played the game even once, you reference those little guys,” McMahan says. “They’re really memorable, and it’s a great mechanic.”

The animated series expands on this by portraying a legion of Thieves who enjoy being kicked by the heroes.

“The sprite has this little grin on his face,” Chandler says of the arcade game character. “He looks like he’s enjoying it. What is happening here?”

The series attributes this reaction to a fetish.

“They’re enjoying getting their little butts kicked,” McMahan says.

A later episode follows a Thief home to reveal he hides his actions from his family. McMahan explains the creative motivation behind the sequence.

“There’s comedy to it, but instead of them just being a detail or a wallpaper, they’re also a thing that we want to give motivation to,” McMahan says. “Those little guys have a point of view in this world.”

“Death Adder always comes back”

Golden Axe concludes its first season while leaving room for future episodes. Based on the games, bringing back the defeated villain is a logical next step.

“Death Adder always comes back in the games,” Chandler says. “There’s always a new adventure for these heroes. And we’ve talked a lot about what those would be. Of course, we’d love to do more.”

With eight existing games in the series, source material is readily available.

“There’s other interesting things to pull from all the other games,” McMahan says, adding that he remains open to brand-friendly crossovers. “There’s other Sega properties that kind of touch on and cross paths with this game that we’d want to expand into that as well.”

For now, the creators intend to keep stories grounded in the fantasy land of Yuria rather than introducing Sonic or Crazy Taxi in season 2.

McMahan adds: “Right now, we’re so proud of this first season that we’d want to spend more time with these characters and see where we could expand the show in a place that still feels like the games.”

Source: Polygon