Warner Bros was working on a Mario Kart-like crossover game

A Mario Kart-like game was in development at Warner Bros. which would have seen players face off as characters from across Warner’s catalog of IP such as Tom and Jerry and Adventure Time, it’s claimed.

The game, which was reportedly greenlit at the start of the pandemic, was planned to be a free-to-play online-only racer, which first targeted console, PC [10,857 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/pc/”>PC, and mobile, before being refocussed as a PC-only title.

Speaking on the Sacred Symbols podcast, host Colin Moriarty noted that Warner Bros San Diego was the studio behind the game. According to Moriarty, one of the main challenges facing the development of the game was the volume of employee turnover at the studio.

According to a source speaking to Moriarty, more than 100 developers were working at the studio during the game’s short development time. The game was codenamed Moonlight, however, it’s claimed that the game was potentially going to be called “WB Racers,” and “XDR,” or cross-drift racers.

“There was quite a bit of animosity internally, with people who worked on the game who felt that it was unfair that their sister teamPlayer First got to launch Multiverse twice when they never got a shot to launch at all after all of that work,” said Moriarty.

Warner Bros San Diego was shut down in 2025. Player First Games and Monolith Productions were also shut down at the same time.

The announcement followed a challenging year for Warner’s games division, which included the commercial failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League [96 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league/”>Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and the disappointing relaunch of Multiversus.

This led to Warner Bros. Games [593 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/warner-bros-games/”>Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav highlighting the games division as a weak link for the company in its earnings results last November, when he said it was “substantially underperforming its potential”.

Warner is planning a follow-up to 2023 blockbuster Hogwarts Legacy [258 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/hogwarts-legacy/”>Hogwarts Legacy as a priority. The Harry Potter spin-off was that year’s best-selling game ahead of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [224 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-series/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-2/”>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and it has since surpassed 30 million sales.