A Call of Duty movie directed by Steven Spielberg could have been a thing, but Activision eventually refused the legendary director's pitch for a very specific reason.
As reported by Puck News, Steven Spielberg, who's a big gamer and a fan of the Call of Duty series, wanted to direct the movie based on the franchise, which sounded like a pretty great idea, considering how much some of his movies have influenced the franchise. Teaming up with Universal dealmaker Jimmy Horowitz, the director's team pitched his vision to Activision, which was reportedly spooked by the famous Spielberg deal, including top-market economics and full control over final cut, production and marketing. Instead, the publisher now owned by Microsoft went with David Ellison's pitch to retain more control over the movie, handing the production to Paramount.
Given the series's immense popularity, a Call of Duty movie was long overdue. Announced earlier this week, the first movie based on the Activision series could only be the beginning of a cinematic universe across film and television series, although, for the time being, the focus will be on this movie, whose director has yet to be announced.
The next entry in the series, which will be facing some serious competition this year with the highly anticipated Battlefield 6, is Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The game is primarily developed by Treyarch, with support from Raven Software for the campaign development, which promises to shake things up quite a bit. The game will launch on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One on November 14.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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