Call of Duty movie will focus on the cost of war, director says
Director Peter Berg says the Modern Warfare-based Call of Duty film, written by Taylor Sheridan, is more than gunfights and is due in cinemas June 30, 2028.
Peter Berg, the director of the upcoming Call of Duty movie, says the film will treat its source material as more than a shooting spectacle. In an interview with ComicBook, he said the Modern Warfare games carry a “real soul” and that the movie will reflect it. The film is scheduled to reach cinemas on June 30, 2028.
Berg’s central point was that the games’ missions and characters deserve a serious approach. He described Captain Price, Soap, Ghost and Alex as “complicated humans” and said they are not “cartoon characters or comic books.” He acknowledged the violence, hardware and killing, but said the games are ultimately looking at the cost of being a warrior who steps between danger and everyone else, and the burden those people carry.
He also pushed back on the idea of a popcorn action film. “This is not just ‘Hey, let’s shoot them all up and shoot popcorn!’” he said, adding that he and Taylor Sheridan both understand the emotional core he is describing. Berg expects the film to be probably not quite as graphically violent as his Netflix film The Mosquito Bowl, but said it will have a strong sense of the consequence of war, which he called “duty.”
The film is being developed at Skydance, run by David Ellison, which GameSpot reports has just acquired Warner Bros. Discovery. It will get a theatrical release. The Mosquito Bowl, a Second World War drama based on a real 1944 football game between Marines in the Pacific, arrives on Netflix on November 25.
Why it matters
Berg and Sheridan both have a record in war and military stories. Berg directed Lone Survivor, about Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, as well as Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. Sheridan wrote Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River, and created the TV series Lioness. Berg’s comments suggest the film will lean on that background rather than on pure action.
The timing also lines up with the franchise. The latest game, Modern Warfare 4, launched on October 23, and the film is aimed at the same Modern Warfare universe. A Battlefield movie is also in the works, with major talent attached, according to GameSpot.
What we don’t know yet
No cast has been named in the sources, and there is no word on which story from the games the film will follow. How closely it will track the plots of the Modern Warfare games remains unclear.
Sources
This story was compiled from the sources above with AI assistance and checked against them before publishing. How we work.
