Every studio and producer these days is chasing a “Star Wars” or Marvel sized franchise, where they can keep pumping out movies (and licensed products) forever, to guarantee a steady revenue stream until the end of time. With that in mind, it’s not a big surprise that there’s over a dozen “Transformers” movies in development, and it’s not a big shock that the video game “Call Of Duty” has mega blockbuster aspirations as well.
Speaking with The Guardian, Activision Blizzard Studios co-presidents Stacey Sher and Nick van Dyk outlined their ambitious plans for the shoot ’em up property.
“We have plotted out many years…We put together this group of writers to talk about where we were going. 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,” Sher said.
“It’s going to have the same sort of high-adrenaline, high-energy aesthetic as the game, but it’s not a literal adaptation. It’s a much more broad and inclusive, global in scope … a big, tentpole Marvel-esque movie,” van Dyk added.
This has been in the works for a while now, and to be fair, the series is hugely popular, with lots of source material, and has attracted big Hollywood names in the past. Trent Reznor composed the theme song for “Call Of Duty: Black Ops II,” Kevin Spacey and Kit Harington have lent their voices, Guy Ritchie and James Mangold have both directed ads for the game, while Michael B. Jordan, Cara Delevigne and football player Marshawn Lynch starred in a promo for “Call Of Duty: Black Ops III.”
Of course, we all know that the video game movie genre is littered with bad films and missed opportunities (see last summer’s “Warcraft,” which is an Activision title, but they had no involvement with the film), so it’s a big hill to climb. However, both Sher and van Dyk have serious credentials. She has Quentin Tarantino‘s “Pulp Fiction,” “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight” among other pictures on her CV, while he worked at Disney during the years they acquired both Lucasfilm and Marvel. So they have lots of experience in the Hollywood game, which could help them succeed where others have failed. [via JoBlo]
