- Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, Yellowstone, Special Ops: Lioness) has been tapped to co-write Paramountโs Call of Duty movie alongside collaborator Peter Berg, the latter of whom will also direct.
- The news comes to light mere days after it was revealed that Sheridan will soon be abandoning his longtime stable at Paramount for a $1 billion contract with NBCUniversal.
- Paramountโs Call of Duty movie release date: TBA.
Just as weโd suspected when earlier reports first indicated Paramount had a Call of Duty adaptation in its crosshairs, streaming golden goose, Sicario screenwriter, and $1 billion man โ Taylor Sheridan โ has been recruited to pen the next major video game movie.
The Yellowstone mastermind, who has essentially been auditioning for the gig with the likes of Special Ops: Lioness and even Without Remorse starring Michael B. Jordan (beyond the aforementioned Sicario alone), is being reunited with director and longtime pal Peter Berg.
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Aside from helming the 2004 Friday Night Lights movie, Hancock, as well as an entire manner of Mark Wahlberg pictures ranging from Lone Survivor to Mile 22, Berg has notably produced Sheridanโs seminal thriller Wind River and Hell or High Water.
Heโll also be juggling directing duties with co-writing the Call of Duty movieโs screenplay. And in light of the recent revelation that Steven Spielberg was turned once turned away from the gig, the fella has sizeable combat boots to fill.
Waning cultural relevance aside, a key obstacle thatโs prevented this long-gestating feature from coming together has involved Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who โ up until now โ seemed fairly hesitant about the Hollywood beast of adapting IP (despite the recent success of his companyโs Minecraft Movie and the Fallout series via Bethesda).
โThe video game business is successful by itself. It doesnโt need this outlet,โ Spencer told Variety.
โYouโve got to start with a partner who understands our team and the story of that IP, and then letting them work through the process. Thatโs my only barrier: letโs 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. Itโs got to be about the creative outlet that linear media offers for our franchises.โ
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It also doesnโt help that Paramount+ pretty comprehensively botched a key Microsoft property in Halo across two universally panned seasons of lore-bastardising boredom. But who knows? Perhaps the terse and hard-nosed styling of Taylor Sheridan will prevent any such outcome.
Sheridan himself has also tangentially dabbled in video games with Amazon Prime Videoโs aforementioned run of the Tom Clancy novel, Without Remorse (which inspired the Rainbow Six franchise), directed by Sicario: Day of the Soldado filmmaker Stefano Sollima. Hopefully, heโs learned a thing or two about potential pitfalls from that lacklustre experience.
Suffice it to say, Paramount are wisely angling to get as much as it can out of the cowboy creative before he makes his 10-figure exodus to NBCUniversal.
Keep an eye out here for potential updates on Paramountโs Call of Duty movie with Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg (cast, plot, trailer, etc.).
