So, it just came out, and to be honest, this is one of those stories on the gaming front worth cupping your chin for a “wait, what?”. Steven Spielberg. THE Steven Spielberg! The man who literalized Saving Private Ryan and half of the screenplays that defined modern blockbuster cinema!! He wanted to do a Call of Duty movie, and Activision said no.
Following a new report, the Spielberg camp had submitted his vision of a Call of Duty film to Activision. This was no casual interest. Spielberg really wanted to direct it. Then things went awry because it seems that Spielberg wanted the project to be his complete creative vision, and the idea scared Activision enough for them to just turn around and sell the film rights to Paramount.
Absorb that for a little while. One of the greatest filmmakers that ever lived wanted to make a movie around your billion-dollar franchise, and you said no because he wanted to direct it properly. The online reactions have been stratospheric, with everyone from gamers to cinema buffs calling it one of the biggest Ls put forth by Activision.
Said one user, “THE DIRECTOR THAT INSPIRED MULTIPLE CODS WANTED TO MAKE A COD MOVIE AND THEY SAID NO.” And the guy means said-the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan actually inspired the entire cinematic aesthetic of the Call of Duty franchise. The beach landing was copied over; it became the design template for a lot of COD missions.
The comments are full of disbelief. Some say it’s “one of the worst rejections ever,” others say, “we just missed out on a potential masterpiece.” One joked that Activision basically told Spielberg, “Thanks, but I’m fine. Go home, boomer.” I don’t know if that’s more funny or painfully true.
There’s some speculation as to what might go in big as essentially rejecting the prestige call of Activision. One user surmised that maybe they watched Indiana Jones 4 and were traumatized, which is fair, but come on-this’s Steven Spielberg we’re talking about. The man made Jurassic Park and E.T. and Jaws. He knows how to make a blockbuster.
Then we have the financial angle. Several comments pointed out that Spielberg’s recent The Fabelmans was viewed as a box office flop, making only $45.6 million against a $40 million budget. But comparing a personal drama with what would surely be a gargantuan action blockbuster seems… somewhat different.
What really blows my mind is thinking about could have. Imagine Spielberg infusing his Saving Private Ryan magic and style into a Call of Duty flick. Intensity, realism, emotional weight-maybe that would have been the video game movie that finally broke the curse and was actually good. Instead, we get whatever Paramount decides to cook up under presumably less visionary leadership.
That timing is relatively strange, too, because Activision just recently announced their partnership with Paramount for the Call of Duty movie universe, presumably hoping to cobble up something of the sort-a la Top Gun: Maverick-which, you know, the logic goes, was good. But they skipped Spielberg to try and resurrect that Top Gun spirit, which feels… I don’t know, missing the forest for the trees.
Grounding views on larger questions about video game adaptations and creative control. Video game companies are famously protective of their IP, and we’ve seen those go wrong time and time again. The most recent wave of genuinely good video game adaptations (The Last of Us, Sonic, Arcane) have all had one thing in common: they allowed people who actually knew what they were doing to adapt the source material instead of micromanaging every tangent.
Spielberg himself has some bonus credit of kinda having touched on video game stuff before: Ready Player One was brimming with game characters and was basically a love letter to gaming culture. So he ain’t a neophyte to this realm. The man understands spectacle and story better than just about any living person today.
This, at the end of the day, really feels like a huge missed chance. Call of Duty has long been trying to become a multimedia franchise, and having Steven freaking Spielberg helm your first huge film adaptation would have been the biggest sweep of credibility you could ask for. That said, they got spooked by the concept of an actual artist wanting to make art with their property.
The response from the gaming community says it all: call it a giant screw-up. When even the most casual observer is screaming, “Wait, they said no to SPIELBERG?!”-that’s when you know that something went awry in the boardroom.
We’ll never get to see what a Spielberg-directed Call of Duty movie would have looked like, but given what he’s done with epic war films and blockbusters, it probably would have been spectacular. So we wait, stuck with whatever mess Paramount will come up with, while gamers keep wondering what Activision is going to lose for them.
