Paramount’s new chairman and CEO David Ellison may have the film rights to Call of Duty in his crosshairs, but don’t get your hopes up for a CoD movie just yet. According to entertainment journalist Matthew Belloni’s latest newsletter, Ellison is eyeing Call of Duty as the next videogame to be adapted at Paramount, following the Sonic the Hedgehog films. Studio chiefs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein are also reportedly interested.
However, this is far from a done deal. Paramount might not even be able to get the film rights to Call of Duty. In an interview with Variety back in April, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer seemed somewhat hesitant about film adaptations, stating:
“The videogame business is successful by itself. It doesn’t need this outlet. You’ve got to start with a partner who understands our team and the story of that IP and then letting them work through the process. That’s my only barrier: let’s never turn this into something where it has to get done, every franchise has to have a game or a movie or a TV show, and it becomes more like licensing. It’s got to be about the creative outlet that linear media offers for our franchises.”
So if a Call of Duty movie is going to happen, it sounds like it needs to be with a studio that can convince Spencer they truly understand the source material and have a meaningful way to adapt it. Maybe Paramount is that studio and Ellison can win Microsoft over, but then again, maybe not. The Sonic the Hedgehog movies have been a success, but Paramount also made the infamous Halo show, which was axed after its second season.
This wouldn’t even be the first time a Call of Duty screen adaptation fell through. Activision announced plans back in 2015 to base a whole cinematic universe around CoD, but it never materialized.
There’s also the challenge of figuring out which CoD game(s) to adapt and which character to center the film on. Considering how vast the Call of Duty series is, there are plenty of candidates, like Alex Mason from Black Ops or John Price from Modern Warfare. However, it’s also possible a Call of Duty film could go the route of Fallout and feature a completely new main character.
Before Paramount can work out any of that, it needs to acquire the rights to make a Call of Duty film to begin with. According to Matthew Belloni, Paramount is currently “negotiating” for those film rights, but hasn’t sealed the deal yet. We’ll have to wait and see if this shot at a Call of Duty screen adaptation makes it to theaters, or faces the same fate as Activision’s attempt.
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