Oh, video game adaptations, will you never cease to amaze us with how good or bad you can be, depending on who is making you? You’d think that with recent successes across both TV and film, we’d be a little more excited about potential new projects. However, when you look at certain new developments on that front, including a Capcom fighting game getting an adaptation with an incredibly questionable cast, you understand why we’re thinking this way. So, what’s the next one on the docket that could be set up for failure? Why, it’s a Call Of Duty Movie made by Paramount!
On the one hand, Paramount is the company that greenlit movies starring Sonic the Hedgehog and his pals, and all three of those movies did incredibly well at the box office, including the one that was released late last year to incredible acclaim. Now, a source is citing that Paramount is trying to buy the movie rights to the legendary FPS title so that they can make a movie, even stating that it’s a “priority” for the brand.
First off, we’re not surprised that Paramount would see this as a “priority,” as it hasn’t exactly been doing the best over the years, including with its streaming service, Paramount+, which hasn’t exactly had the best content out there. Just saying. So, a Call of Duty Movie could be viewed as a “shot in the arm,” no pun intended, due to how it’s basically the #1 gaming franchise that consistently sells millions upon millions of software units every year. In fact, we’re just a few months away from its next big release.
The question that must be asked, though, is, “What would the movie be about?” That is an incredibly fair question, and there are multiple paths that they can go. Most associate the franchise with two time periods: World War II or the modern day. In all fairness, it’s likely they’ll go the modern-day route, that way, they can craft their own stories without having to worry about being “historically accurate” with battles, characters, enemies, and so on.
As for the main characters, they’d likely be in a special ops group that has to undertake a dangerous mission to save the world, like we’ve seen in numerous titles from the franchise.
The biggest obstacle, though, is translating the FPS gameplay into a film without it seeming like “just another Hollywood action film,” of which there are a lot.
Your move, Paramount.
