Paramount and Activision's movie adaptation of the Call of Duty video game franchise will be set in the Modern Warfare universe.
Director and co-writer Peter Berg dropped the confirmation live at Fanatics Fest in New York City on Saturday. Taylor Sheridan (the mastermind behind the Yellowstone universe, Landman, Lioness, and basically half of modern TV) is co-writing the screenplay with him.
Berg, for his part, knows his way around intense, adrenaline-fueled storytelling. His directing resume includes Friday Night Lights, Battleship, Lone Survivor, and Deepwater Horizon. So if you're picturing gritty, boots-on-the-ground action, you're probably on the right track.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare first hit shelves back in November 5, 2007, and it was a genuine game-changer for the franchise. It was the first installment to break away from its World War II setting and set things in the modern world.
The story followed dual perspectives: a U.S. Marine named Paul Jackson and a British SAS operative named John "Soap" MacTavish, both caught up in a fictional global crisis. In the year 2011, a civil war breaks out in Russia between its government and ultranationalists led by Imran Zakhaev, who seek to restore Russia to its Soviet-era glory, while a separatist group simultaneously seizes control of a Middle Eastern country through a coup d'état.
The game's success spawned two sequels and kicked off the Modern Warfare subseries that dominated Call of Duty throughout the late-2000s and early 2010s.
A soft reboot of the Modern Warfare games, simply titled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, dropped in October 2019, bringing a new engine, updated visuals, and a reimagined (and noticeably grittier) take on the story, but with that same core DNA intact. It also spawned two sequels: Modern Warfare II in 2022 and Modern Warfare III in 2023.
While the Modern Warfare setting is confirmed, it's unclear if the movie will specifically adapt the subseries story itself, or if Berg and Sheridan will take their own creative liberties.
Fans can look forward to the Call of Duty movie hitting the big screen on June 30, 2028. Its release will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Call of Duty franchise.
“I told everyone we were only going to make a movie if it’s right. In David Ellison, we found that partnership,” Activision head Rob Kostich said back in April at CinemaCon. “We want to make sure that the authenticity of it is captured on a human level so that it feels really real and infuse that with epic scope.”