A Call of Duty movie is finally happening at Paramount here are my 5 biggest hopes for the video game adaptation

Date:
Fri, 05 Sep 2025 22:00:00 +0000

Description:
With Paramount confirming a CoD movie is coming, here's what I'd like to see
in the adaptation

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Paramount confirmed a huge deal to bring the Call of Duty video game
franchise to the big screen this week.

The studio, which recently closed a massive merger with Skydance , inked a
deal with Microsoft-owned video game publisher Activision to turn the long-running franchise into a live action movie, with Variety reporting that the pact could extend to further movies and even TV shows to bulk up Paramount+.

CoDCU anyone?

David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount, said the deal was a dream come true, promising fans a cinematic experience that honors the legacy of this one-in-a-million brand thrilling longtime fans of Call of Duty while captivating a whole new generation.

It sounds like the franchise is in good hands, especially with Ellison
evoking one of the best Paramount+ movies , Top Gun: Maverick , in his statement, but with close to 30 games to draw inspiration from spanning everything from World War Two to the far future, exactly what the movie will look like is anyone's guess. Speculation is rife around what the final film could end up being, but heres the five things I think are a must for the
movie.

Adapt a previous storyline

Paramount have said that the Call of Duty film adaptation will deliver on the hallmarks of what fans love about the iconic series, while boldly expanding
the franchise to entirely new audiences.

Now, that sounds worryingly close to the tactic employed by the disappointing Assassins Creed movie to me, which got so bogged down in furthering the franchise lore, it failed to deliver on the free-running, historical fun
gamers love.

Whatever direction Paramount takes with CoD , theyd be wise to pull on whats come before, whether thats the visceral WW2 games, the trippy Black Ops
series or the action-thriller vibes of Modern Warfare . They could even
create a generations-spanning mash-up of all three, something the games have touched on with the connections between Vanguard and Black Ops .

For now, nothing is confirmed with regards to the movies storyline, just
don't expect the infamous 'No Russian' mission to play out on the big screen any time soon. Bring back the big-name cast

While Call of Duty doesnt necessarily sell itself on featuring big name stars like Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077 or Norman Reedus in Death Stranding , it has nonetheless featured some big Hollywood names lending their voice and/or likeness to major characters in the games.

Over the years weve seen the likes of Josh Duhamel (Pierson, WWII ), Idris
Elba (Truck, Modern Warfare 3 ), Ice Cube (Bowman, Black Ops ), Jason Statham (Waters, Call of Duty ), Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Mirela, Black Ops 4: Zombies ), Gary Oldman (Reznov, World at War and Black Ops ) and Kit
Harrington (Kotch, Infinite Warfare ) all appearing in the games and it would be great to see some of these actors return, whether thats reprising iconic roles or even in a cameo capacity. Itd be particularly exciting to see Oldman come back to a role many consider the best performance in a CoD game, but
that would all depend on the timeline the film opts for.

The actor Id most like to see return, however, is Avatar star Sam
Worthington, who portrayed Black Ops CIA operative Alex Mason. Mason is the lead protagonist of the first instalment in the Black Ops series and goes on
to remain a fairly major character throughout. As the closest thing the franchise has to a major lead, Id be surprised if Mason isnt included in the film in some capacity, and its a no-brainer to have Worthington reprise the role.

First-person chaos

The Call of Duty franchise is arguably the most iconic first-person shooter
of all time and it would be great to see the film reflect that in some way.

From the beaches of Normandy to the battlefields of the future, the first-person PoV the game employs fully immerses the player in the action, sending bullets whizzing past our heads and explosions throwing us to the ground. It also adds emotional depth to the story, as we look into the eyes
of a fallen comrade as they breathe their last or carry out some less than savoury actions with our own hands.

Now, Im not expecting a Hardcore Henry -style movie entirely shot in the first-person PoV, and I definitely dont want a Doom- like replication of the video game experience, but getting in close with the characters as the
carnage unfolds is a must if Paramount want to replicate the intensity the games can offer. And if they really want to recreate the gaming experience, throw in a scene with a too-far-away shot of a wildly out of control
helicopter too.

Get the right director

Ellisons comment that Paramount is approaching this film with the same disciplined, uncompromising commitment to excellence that guided our work on Top Gun: Maverick certainly implies that theyre shooting for another
prestige action flick, and possibly looking to fill a Mission: Impossible shaped hole.

If thats the case, then the men behind either of those Tom Cruise hits
Joseph Kosinski and Christopher McQuarrie would be a solid choice for the directors chair. Theres even been rumours that before Activision signed on
the dotted line with Paramount, they were courting Steven Spielberg (a known fan of the games) to helm the flick, but the sort of all encompassing deal
you get with The Beard scared them off.

For me though, theres one thing this movie needs Bayhem. Personally, I think
a Call of Duty movie needs to be exactly the sort of big, dumb fun that
Michael Bay excels at. The macho military side of the Transformers franchise screams CoD , and the director has proven he has what it takes to tell a dramatic military story with the visceral 13 Hours . If the movie ends up telling a sweeping, timeline spanning story, Bay could well be the perfect
man to bring that sort of epic action to life.

Zombies

This pick is probably just wishful thinking on my part, with Paramount
seeming determined to deliver a more down-to-earth military tale, but almost
as long as the franchise has existed, the Zombies mode has been a huge part
of it.

Debuting in World at War in 2008, the Zombies mode is a last stand type game where players must fend off hordes of undead. The hugely popular edition has been present in around a dozen of the games since, with the likes of Jeff Goldblum, Heather Graham and Kiefer Sutherland starring in the side-games. Since Black Ops Cold War in 2020, the Zombies mode has even followed a pretty intricate storyline throughout the releases, focusing around the Dark Aether dimension.

Of course, its unlikely the film will properly feature zombies, but it would
be neat to see the mode incorporated via a dream sequence, hallucination or something similar. And maybe if the live-action iteration of the franchise
does expand to streaming series', well get something akin to Marvel Zombies down the line.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/streaming/paramount-plus/a-call-of-duty-movie-is-fin ally-happening-at-paramount-here-are-my-5-biggest-hopes-for-the-video-game-ada ptation

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