2K is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Mafia franchise this month. It did so with a trailer (embedded below) and an extremely long interview with the Hangar 13 developers General Manager Roman Hladík, Head of Production and Media Director Tomáš Hřebíček, and Game Director Alex Cox.
It was Hladík, who has worked on every Mafia installment yet since the beginning, who confirmed the existence of a new game with the following words.
I’m happy to confirm we’ve started work on an all-new Mafia project! While it’s a few years away and we can’t share anything more right now, we’re really excited to keep working on this beloved franchise and to entertain our players with new stories.
Hangar 13 hasn’t been sailing on the smoothest winds. The game studio had already canceled a Cold War-themed Project Rhapsody before making Mafia III; in late 2021, we learned of another big cancellation as Take-Two revealed that it had to write off $53 million in costs because of the latest Hangar 13 project codenamed Volt (after they released Mafia: Definitive Edition in 2020).
Hangar 13’s latest project was creatively ambitious and exciting. When we pursue new intellectual properties, we occasionally may encounter situations that call for cancellation. We encourage our teams to pursue their passions and take creative risks, balanced against prudent commercial and financial decisions and our unwavering commitment to delivering the best entertainment experiences. We have full confidence in Hangar 13’s leadership and development team and believe that they can and will deliver critical and commercial successes in the future. Hangar 13’s leadership is working closely with 2K to ensure that Hangar 13 team members continue to do meaningful work, either as part of Hangar 13 or on one of our other development teams.
Sadly, there was also a round of layoffs just a few months ago, and even the studio head Haden Blackman stepped down. We also learned that the studio would be working on a Top Spin revival and a Mafia prequel made with Unreal Engine 5, which is likely the game the developers confirmed today.
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