Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan and Battleship director Peter Berg are to make a Call Of Duty movie for Paramount. Over 20 years after the videogame franchise was established, Call Of Duty is getting a videogame adaptation, with Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg announced (via Variety) as its co-writers – Berg will direct. In machismo terms, ... Call Of Duty | Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg to make film adaptation
Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan and Battleship director Peter Berg are to make a Call Of Duty movie for Paramount.
Over 20 years after the videogame franchise was established, Call Of Duty is getting a videogame adaptation, with Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg announced (via Variety) as its co-writers – Berg will direct.
In machismo terms, the Sheridan-Berg pairing is like a 1970s supergroup. Taylor Sheridan is the writer of such tough films as Sicario and Wind River, and is the creator of dirt-under-the-fingernails shows like Yellowstone and Tulsa King. Berg, similarly, has directed tough thrillers like Lone Survivor, Patriots Day, Deepwater Horizon and Battleship. All but one of those stars Mark Wahlberg.
They’re a logical pairing for Call Of Duty, a series of first-person military shooter games that, since 2003, has moved players from World War II Europe to Cold War-era Russia to the Middle East and even into space (2016’s Infinite Warfare).
Plot details for the movie haven’t been announced, but the biggest-selling games – Black Ops III and 2019’s Modern Warfare – were set either a few decades in the future or the present, so the fan-pleasing choice may be to go for a contemporary story along those lines. Modern Warfare, for example, follows a gruff set of special forces operatives as they attempt to stop a rogue Russian military group from unleashing some stolen chemical weapons.
The adaptation was first announced in September, and around the same time, a story emerged that Steven Spielberg had originally wanted to direct it.
This would have been quite fitting, had it happened; an enthusiastic gamer, Spielberg produced and co-wrote the original Medal Of Honor – a 1999 first-person shooter set in World War II. A few years after that game was a franchise-creating hit, out came Call Of Duty in 2003 – developed by several designers who worked on the third game in the Medal Of Honor series, and plainly intended as a souped-up competitor.
Spielberg could therefore have directed the film adaptation of the videogame franchise he inadvertently inspired in the first place. The pop cultural snake eating its tail.
Unfortunately, the report went, Spielberg was too expensive and wanted too much creative control, and so Sheridan and Berg it is.
There’s no due date for the Call Of Duty movie yet, but we’ll bring you more as we hear it.
