Paramount Pictures’ upcoming Call of Duty movie will not turn its soldiers into superheroes, director Peter Berg has insisted. Instead, the film will focus on the cost of war and having to be a warrior, drawing its inspiration from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games.
Call of Duty (Credits: Paramount Pictures / Activision)
Berg, known for Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor, is directing the video game adaptation from a script by Taylor Sheridan. Speaking to ComicBook, he made clear that this will not be a comic book tentpole in military dress, and that the characters at its centre are meant to feel like complicated, burdened humans, not cartoon heroes.
Call of Duty Movie Cost of War: What Peter Berg Said
Berg pointed to the missions, storylines and characters that define Modern Warfare, naming Captain Price, Soap, Ghost and Alex as examples of what the film is aiming for. In his view, those figures are not simple action figures, but people carrying real weight, with nuanced stories and a soul underneath the violence, hardware and equipment.
“These are not, and no disrespect, cartoon characters or comic books,” Berg said. “These are very nuanced storylines; there’s a real soul to the Modern Warfare universe. Yes, there’s violence and hardware and equipment and killing. But underneath it, I think the game, and the creators of the game, are really looking at the cost of war, the cost of having to be a warrior who’s, for whatever reason, chosen to put himself between real danger and the rest of us, and the burden that these guys carry.”
That framing is a deliberate break from the usual video game movie playbook. Many adaptations lean into spectacle first and character second, trusting recognisable imagery to carry the film. Berg is arguing for the opposite approach: start with the burden of the job, and let the action grow out of it.
Why the Modern Warfare Angle Matters
Choosing Modern Warfare as the creative anchor gives the film a specific tone to aim for. The Modern Warfare games are famous for morally grey missions, close-knit special forces teams and stories where victories rarely feel clean. Price, Soap and Ghost are not invincible, and their appeal has always come from loyalty, sacrifice and dark humour under pressure, rather than superhuman power.
Berg’s own track record fits that approach. Lone Survivor was built around the grim reality of a failed mission and the men who lived through it, while Friday Night Lights found its drama in the pressure placed on young athletes and their coaches, not just in the games themselves. Sheridan, meanwhile, is known for writing stories about people caught between duty, family and violence, which suggests the script will spend as much time on why these soldiers fight as on how they fight.
There is still plenty we do not know, including casting and a release date, and no footage has been shown yet. But Berg’s comments set a clear expectation: if you are waiting for a Call of Duty film that treats its soldiers like superheroes, this is not that movie. If you want one that asks what war costs the people who fight it, that is exactly the film Paramount is trying to make.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.
