Why Hasn't Hollywood Made A Call of Duty Movie Yet?

taizuke

taizuke

Member
I recently saw Extraction 2 (pretty good action flick) and couldn't help thinking some of the action sequences could've been taken straight from CoD.

Out of all kinds of adaptations, you'd think making some military movie and slapping the name Call of Duty would be easy. Instead, Hollywood seems focused on adapting properties that are much harder to adapt, like Monster Hunter, Assassin's Creed, World of Warcraft, and not to mention anime.

If they're worried about mass appeal, CoD continues to outsell many game franchises every year, and it's the main point of contention between Sony and Microsoft's Activision deal. And, even if CoD isn't as popular as it used to be, how come there wasn't a movie adaptation 7-10 years ago when it was?

It's not to say that a CoD movie would be excellent because it's such an easy translation to the big screen. No. I'm pretty sure it would be just another run of the mil Hollywood action movie, but at least it would make sense compared to other much more difficult adaptations.
 
CoD sells buckets because of the MP, not the story/lore/campaign.

Until they make multiplayer movies, I don't see it doing gangbusters at the box office. You could also argue COD came from (war) movies instead of the other way around. AC and WoW are/were novel concepts from a story/universe perspective as IP. CoD really isn't.
 
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They're fun after you've watched all the movies, so an actual movie about CoD doesn't sound very good. I barely remember the plots as is and I play the campaign every year. I remember the gist of MW and Black Ops. I remember driving a tank in WW2. Wall running in AW. That's about it.
 
I don't see much commercial pull for war movies. The successful ones that came out recently (Dunkirk, 1947) came from auteur directors; weren't exactly straightforward popcorn films.
 
I'm sure people have tried before, but then they went to the studio to ask for $150m and the studio told them to GTFO.
 
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Strike Back is the closest thing to it, and it was fun to be honest, especially if you didn't take it too seriously. Had more of a comedic vibe but the action was definitely COD imo.
 
There was one planned to release a few years ago, never happened. And now it seems all but abandoned
 
Because fast and furious won't fucking end


Fast And Furious GIF by The Fast Saga
 
Top 5 gaming franchise i hate the most for sure.
Call of Duty is one of them.

Hollywood makes them every once in a while, they just dont call them call of duty, they are those generic war films, not a fan of the war films genre anyway, the only war film i really loved was Full Metal Jacket and it was mostly the first half which i would rater 10/10, the second half where they go to war instantly goes downhill to like 8/10.
And i've watched all the acclaimed war films, like Deer Hunter, Come and See, Saving Private Ryan, 1917, Platoon, Apocalypse now and many more.
In the end i concluded this genre isn't really my thing 🤷‍♂️

Hollywood can fuck off, i dont think they have EVER gave justice to ANY video game adaptation.

The only video game adaptation i have liked and bothered to finish was Arcane, massive respect to the creators of that show for the amount of talent they poured into it, clearly it was a show made by people who loved the source material.
 
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Make seeing the movie part of a battle pass or just unlocks a unique skin or whatever it is in game and it would probably perform well enough.
 
Call of Duty is an annual rebranding of the same concept from Call of Duty 1, which was a Medal of Honor copycat, which in turn ripped off many things from the movie Saving Private Ryan.
There you go: your CoD movie was released years before the game
 
Hollywood has made many Call of Duty movies.

Black Hawk Down
Act of Valor
Dunkirk
Enemy at the Gates
1917
Saving Private Ryan
Fury
The Pacific
Full Metal Jacket
Apocalypse Now
The Dirty Dozen
etc
etc
 
There are already too many war movies. If you want a COD movie, it would have to be a story about some players and i don't see how this could become a blockbuster. Most game movies are trash anyways, still trying to forget Uncharted with those ridiculous flying ships,
 
There was one made back in 2018, but the MPAA and BBFC both refused to classify the movie, owing to an overuse of tea bagging sequences.

"There needs to be a reason for such scenes to exist, but we were unable to find any such rational beyond pure perversion. We also concluded it was racist and a little bit noncey." -- BBFC spokeswoman (now receiving therapy).
Click to expand...
 
There is really no point of making an adaptation, because all the story beats have been lifted from movies anyway. That said, I would totally be up for Infinite Warfare movie
 
Am sure many a studio has tried to ink a call of duty movie deal. Its a massive gaming franchise and Hollywood is all about profits.

Activision must have said no many times.
 
It would be redundant because CoD series already lifted a bunch of ideas from Hollywood movies.
  • The early WWII games were heavily inspired by Saving Private Ryan and Enemy At The Gates.
  • The original Modern Warfare series borrowed from modern war films like Black Hawk Down but it was also an era where they basically tried their best to make a Michael Bay: The Video Game, even going as far as lifting scenes directly from his movies and hiring Hans Zimmer to do the music. But some other movies like Crimson Tide also have a very CoD-like feel to them.
  • Black Ops lifted ideas from a bunch of Vietnam War movies and the main character is basically a rip-off of The Manchurian Candidate.
  • Vanguard tried to be a more stylish WWII story like Dirty Dozen or Inglorious Basterds.
  • The most recent Modern Warfare games were inspired by films such as 13 Hours or American Sniper; MWII in particular is also very reminiscent of Sicario movies.
Besides, CoD was never really about deep storytelling or complex characters. It was about a vicarious experience of participating in an awesome interactive action movie, and the story was basically just a wallpaper that gave the bare minimum of context to all the mayhem. Some of the characters were cool, but maybe except for Mason from Black Ops, none of them were really characters, and more like vessels to deliver cool one-liners and bark orders at the player.

Or, to put it bluntly: CoD isn't a very good movie material and it can only work as a video game that was inspired by actual movies.
 
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They probably could easily milk the name, but either they would need to write a script that's actually good, add likable/interesting characters especially the main character not being that blank silent protagonists, or those movies could be direct to DVD type of movies that would ultimately tarnish the IP. The latter would be dumb, and the former might happen if a script exists that somehow fits and combine it with a well known IP which benefits its marketing. Sorta like Joker was not actually a Joker movie in its origin but somehow perfectly fit.
 
phant0m said:
CoD sells buckets because of the MP, not the story/lore/campaign.

Until they make multiplayer movies, I don't see it doing gangbusters at the box office. You could also argue COD came from (war) movies instead of the other way around. AC and WoW are/were novel concepts from a story/universe perspective as IP. CoD really isn't.
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if the SP was totally irrelevant than Activision wouldn't invest tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars into it annually. They have all the data.

The SP is popular and they try to do continuity with characters, etc. Thing is I have more faith in Activision to make a spectacle of the campaign than Hollywood in 2023 to do it justice.
 
In "current year" when everything is offensive I'm not sure the market is ready for a movie about a 12 years old white boy yelling racial slurs at strangers online
 
phant0m said:
CoD sells buckets because of the MP, not the story/lore/campaign.

Until they make multiplayer movies, I don't see it doing gangbusters at the box office. You could also argue COD came from (war) movies instead of the other way around. AC and WoW are/were novel concepts from a story/universe perspective as IP. CoD really isn't.
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Explain how there is a Gran Turismo movie then.

With GT they are literally pulling shit out their arse to try come up with a story. With Call of Duty you can just come up with a generic plot about any war. As long as it's got lots of explosions, fighting, and famous faces then it'd do well.
 
Simple answer, war movies dont make billions, lets be real a cod movie would probably cost well over 120 million and have to be pg13 which would probably piss alot of normies off
 
ComputerBlue said:
I see call of duty campaigns as modern video game versions of 80s action movies. So in other words, they've been done to death.
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This.

There's also virtually no continuity in terms of the story between the games. Even within the sub-series like Modern Warfare, they're largely isolated stories in the campaign that just happen to star some recurring character appearances.

So essentially every modern military action movie every made could have the COD label slapped on and no-one would be any the wiser.
 
Shut0wen said:
a cod movie would probably cost well over 120 million and have to be pg13 which would probably piss alot of normies off
Click to expand...
This is probably the closest "real" answer...
The film would be either have to be classified as 12 or whatever to get as many butts in seats as possible, but not be worth watching as a pg film, so not getting back its budget+profit, or classified as 18, and flop at the box office for not letting 12 year old see it in cinema

They'd need very strong dvd/blu-ray support...but who's buying cod movie blu-ray when you can buy an actual cod game at age 12 easily enough. Streaming services couldn't support it financially on their own. If its terrible it devalues Activision/Cod branding, annoying the shareholders, in an especially worrisome time at the moment at Activision

Why spend 100's of millions of dollars on an unknown, when you can bank that money, take last months cod, plonk a new number on the end of it and reskin the characters, sell it to kids as the best thing since last cod and make half a billion dollars?
 
A call of duty movie could happen, you're going to get it at some point in time and if you're going to make a call of duty movie you have to have a good director calling all the shots, and good luck to the lead actor and actress.
 
They have, it's literally every pro-US military movie that has come out the past 50 years lol
 
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