Movie adaptations of popular video games have largely failed to stick the landing over the years. Some call it a curse. You can trace the

critical and box office failures all the way back to 1993’s Super Mario Bros. movie, starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as

Luigi, Nintendo’s famous plumbers. With a 28% Rotten Tomatoes score, it remains one of the worst-reviewed video game movies of all-

 

 

time, though some fans and critics have warmed to it over the years. The Street Fighter movie that came out the following year bombed even harder, landing an 11% critic score on Rot

Over the years, directors have tried their hands at franchises as wide-ranging as Tomb Raider, Uncharted, and Assassin’s Creed with little success, but somewhere along the way it seems the curse has broken. There’s debate over what actually broke the curse. Some say it was Wreck-It-Ralph, though that was a film about video games rather than an adaptation of one. Others point to HBO’s The Last of Us, though

 

 

that’s a TV show rather than a movie. One of the best-received adaptations was 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog and its two sequels. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has an 86% Rotten Tomatoes score, making it one of the best-reviewed video game movies ever made.

 

 

 

Whatever lifted the curse, it’s made video game adaptations of popular franchises a great deal more palatable to movie studios and producers — and there’s no better video game to make into a blockbuster action movie than Call of Duty, the best-selling video game franchise nearly every year.

We learned recently that Steven Spielberg was reportedly in talks to direct the Call of Duty movie, though he allegedly wanted full creative control of the project. Instead, Paramount landed the rights to the wildly popular first-person shooter franchise and announced that Yellowstone creator, Taylor Sheridan, would team up with director Peter Berg on the film. Sheridan will co-write the script with Berg, and Berg will direct.

Sheridan is best-known as the creator of the hit TV show, Yellowstone, but he and Berg have worked previously on two excellent films: the 2016 Western, Hell or High Water, which earned four Oscar nominations, and 2017’s gripping crime thriller, Wind River.

But it’s another film that makes me confident that Call of Duty is in good hands: the 2015 action crime thriller, Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film is about as close to a Call of Duty campaign as it gets.

Sicario’s story is actually a lot like a Call of Duty campaign. It’s a heart-pounding, action-packed film filled with tense gunfights, machine gun-toting special ops soldiers, plot twists, betrayals, and plenty of suspense.

The story follows FBI special agent, Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) as she finds herself caught up in a CIA operation against a Mexican drug cartel. She joins a joint task force led by CIA officer, Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). The task force includes Delta Force operators, Deputy US Marshals and CIA agents as well as a mysterious Mexican prosecutor, Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro).

The mission Macer finds herself on is nothing like she expected, and by the end of the film she’s disillusioned, furious, and more than a little traumatized. It’s grim, but it’s exactly the kind of story you’d find in a Call of Duty campaign — only better. The film’s sequel, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, brings ISIS terrorists into the mix. There’s a mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II’s campaign that reminded me a lot of these films when I played the game back in 2022. It would not surprise me to learn that Infinity Ward took inspiration from Sicario. The game even has a character named Alejandro and another named Graves — just one letter away from Graver. It appears we are coming full circle.

Beyond Sicario and Yellowstone, Sheridan’s slate of shows is massive. Two Yellowstone prequels, 1883 and 1923, both Westerns with big names like Harrison Ford and Tim McGraw attached. He also created the crime dramas Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King and Landman. But it’s his spec-ops thriller, Lioness, that reminds me most of Call of Duty.

Lioness stars Zoe Saldaña as Joe McNamara, a CIA agent who runs the Lioness program, training women as special ops operators who infiltrate dangerous organizations around the globe. It has all the bombastic military action fans would want in a Call of Duty film.

While it’s hard to imagine how Sheridan will find time to actually add more projects to his extremely busy schedule, between Sicario and Lioness, it appears Call of Duty is in very good hands. I’m not a fan of everything Sheridan puts out, but he’s the perfect choice for a big, over-the-top military thriller.

As a side-note, I’d love to see Steven Spielberg make a WW2-themed Call of Duty in the future. While there are no details around the upcoming film’s plot, I suspect it will take place in the Modern Warfare timeline. If you’re looking for a TV show that also feels a lot like a Call of Duty campaign, check out The Terminal List: Dark Wolf starring Taylor Kitsch and Tom Hopper. It’s surprisingly good.

ten Tomatoes. (Fortunately, the upcoming Street Fighter movie looks really good).