Yellowstone, Landman and, now, Call of Duty. Taylor Sheridan, co-creator of the aforementioned hit shows, will co-write Paramount and Activision’s upcoming live-action video game adaptation.

Peter Berg will also co-write and direct the movie, which was announced last month. Berg and Sheridan are longtime friends and previously collaborated on 2016’s Hell or High Water and 2017’s Wind River. Berg directed 2013’s Lone Survivor, 2016’s Patriots Day, and 2016’s Deepwater Horizon. Berg, Sheridan and David Glasser will produce the Call of Duty film.

 

 

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Call of Duty is a first-person shooter military video game series that debuted in 2003. CNET senior writer David Lumb calls it “arguably the biggest shooter franchise in gaming, with millions of players picking up every year’s new entry to the series.”

 

 

Lumb said the franchise is known for its bombastic single-player campaigns, which feature globe-spanning plots that rival those of the Mission Impossible films. “A Call of Duty movie has a lot of material to draw from,” Lumb said.

He also noted that Berg’s direction of Lone Survivor would fit the grim military heroism of Call of Duty, while Taylor Sheridan’s spate of neo-Western films and shows could lend a frontier adventurism to the film.

 

 

“Their collective works seemingly harmonize with the jingoistic pro-military tune of Activision’s shooter franchise — which is probably a good thing for Call of Duty fans,” Lumb concluded.

A release announcing Paramount and Activision’s film deal teased that it’ll be “designed to thrill its massive global fan base by delivering on the hallmarks of what fans love about the iconic series, while boldly expanding the franchise to entirely new audiences.” It didn’t include cast or plot information.

 

 

The update follows recent news that Sheridan is leaving Paramount for NBCUniversal.

In June 2018, Taylor Sheridan’s first television series, Yellowstone, premiered on the Paramount Network. Sheridan had found some success with his film Sicario, but no one was prepared for how massive a phenomenon his show would become. Soon, it seemed everyone was tuning in to witness the Dutton family’s struggle to hold on to Yellowstone Ranch.

Anchored by Kevin Costner’s gruff personality, Yellowstone has gained something of a reputation for being made with red states in mind. One could connect the dots between Sheridan’s rising popularity with the overall shifting of the American political landscape—if one wanted to. But the politics of the series aren’t that clear-cut. Before its conclusion last year, Yellowstone was one of the most visible platforms for Indigenous actors like Gil Birmingham and Mo Brings Plenty, and one of the few shows actually curious about Indigenous land sovereignty. (In fact, this became the entire foundation of the Yellowstone origin story, the series 1883.) Sheridan has written numerous queer female characters, but just as many scenes making fun of pronouns. He seems to be interested in powerful women, yet often sexualizes them. It’s all something of a mixed bag, and it’s not easy to pin down.

But the bottom line is that Yellowstone is an extremely watchable family drama, even where it falters. It also is, respectfully, a batshit series. There are huge soapy betrayals—a son finds out his father is not actually his father and that’s why he never felt his love, for example—and over-the-top scripts, especially as performed by Kelly Reilly. (“I hope you die of ass cancer!”) No wonder it was able to attract 13.6 million viewers in its final season.

Yellowstone added up to such a massive success for Paramount+ that the network gave Sheridan a blank check. Suddenly, he was producing as many shows as Ryan Murphy: Three in the Yellowstone universe, one about oil fields instead of cows and ranches, another that’s essentially just a Sylvester Stallone showcase, and even one about women in the CIA, with many more in production. But how many of his shows are actually good? And which ones will survive the tug-of-war as he departs Paramount for NBCUniversal, who recently poached him for $1 billion? We dove deep into the Sheridan back catalog, watching everything from Mayor of Kingstown to 1923 to rank all every single one of his shows. Read on for our list.