Black Ops and Modern Warfare will inspire an intertwined blockbuster movie franchise for Call Of Duty, which Activision Blizzard hopes will rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Call Of Duty‘s credentials as a gaming franchise are not in doubt, but the brand’s transition to film could prove difficult for a medium that has historically struggled on the silver screen.
However, with a former Disney executive as well as former Quentin Tarantino alumni navigating the ship, Call Of Duty could very well change mainstream perceptions of the dreaded game-to-film adaptation.
A recent feature in The Guardian details the company’s active push to create and establish a Call Of Duty movie franchise.
Activision Blizzard Studios is led by former Disney executive Nick van Dyk and renowned Hollywood producer Stacey Sher, whose credits include a string of Tarantino films, starting with her executive producer credit in 1994’s Pulp Fiction.
Sher says the team behind the perceived movie franchise has plotted out a story across many years, and it could start as early as 2018.
“We put together this group of writers to talk about where we were going,” Sher began. “There’ll be a film that feels more like Black Ops, the story behind the story. The Modern Warfare series looks at what it’s like to fight a war with the eyes of the world on you. And then maybe something that is more of a hybrid, where you are looking at private, covert operations, while a public operation is going on.”
That suggests a cross-over ala The Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Van Dyk didn’t mince his words in the interview, saying each film will act as “a big, tentpole Marvel-esque movie”, with the primary goal to create “these individual universes that interconnect and a timeline that makes sense with consistent themes and Easter eggs”.
Interestingly — and perhaps importantly — is that the films will be unlikely to directly follow the story of the games, instead focusing on the “same sort of high-adrenaline, high-energy aesthetic” as the games.
Game-to-movie adaptations have arguably struggled due to filmmakers trying to recreate the narrative drive of games for screen.
The problem, however, is that it’s difficult to reproduce a story for film that is centred around player engagement and influence. Activision Blizzard’s goal here may be to simply take the aesthetic nature of Call Of Duty — the “high-adrenaline, high-energy aesthetic” — and create a unique story around that.
It’ll be interesting to see how it transpires.