The Next Cinematic Universe Is Going to Be ‘Call of Duty’
Back in 2015, Activision created Activision Blizzard Studios, which was in charge of coming up with ideas for how to turn their “vast library of intellectual property” into films and TV shows. It’s an ambitious undertaking, given the vast amount of video game content they have at their disposal, and now, after almost two years, a team of writers has planned out a Call of Duty cinematic universe.
The team, Activision Blizzard Studios co-presidents Stacey Sher and Nick van Dyk, have been hard at work outlining a multi-film franchise that’ll have the feel of the Call of Duty games without basically recycling their plots, according to The Guardian. Each film will be set in a Call of Duty era, like Vietnam or Modern Warfare’s modern day of drones and surveillance, and the first could open as early as 2018.
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 has produced a number of great movies, including Pulp Fiction, The Hateful Eight, and Gattaca, and Van Dyk was a senior executive at Disney, overlooking the Marvel and Star Wars brands, so these two definitely know exactly what they’re doing. And even aside from Call of Duty, Blizzard has a wealth of material to draw from. The promotional campaign for their recent sensation Overwatch, for one thing, contains animated shorts introducing key playable characters that would be the prefect basis for feature films all on their own.
Call of Duty, in particular, has drawn some Hollywood A-listers for its own promotional campaign, with the likes of Chris Evans, Kevin Spacey, and Cara Delevingne lending their faces and voices to commercials. And it’s pretty much one of the most, if not the most, popular game series of all time. Marvel had better watch their six.