Call of Duty Movie: Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan in Talks to Script, Peter Berg Poised to Direct

Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan is in talks to script and Lone Survivor’s Peter Berg is near a deal to direct Paramount’s live-action Call of Duty movie.

The news comes via The Hollywood Reporter. Sheridan made headlines late last week when news broke that he was parting ways with Paramount+ – where he’s made hit series like Yellowstone and its spinoffs, Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, Lioness, Landman, and Lawman: Bass Reeves – for a billion-dollar deal with NBCUniversal.

(Paramount, under the new ownership of Skydance, reportedly didn’t even bother to make an offer to keep their hit-maker Sheridan.)

Paramount Pictures and Activision announced in September that they were teaming for a live-action Call of Duty movie.

It’s still unclear which time period the film will depict as the game franchise, which began in 2003, has covered everything from World War II to the present day to the future. The next game, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, is due out in November.

Activation has been actively developing a Call of Duty movie since 2009 when they filed for a trademark for the film. In 2013, Activation’s then-CEO Bobby Kotick threw cold water on the idea of adapting Call of Duty into a movie, saying “movies based on video games rarely please devoted fans and could taint the brand.”

But in 2016, Activation Blizzard Studios was formed with co-presidents Stacey Sher and Nick van Dyk outlining their plans for a Marvel-style CoD cinematic universe in 2017.

Sicario 2: Soldado’s Stefano Sollima was attached to direct a Call of Duty movie in 2018, with plans for a sequel already set in motion at the time with Black Panther’s Joe Robert Cole attached to script. Obviously, none of those plans ever materialized.

For more CoD coverage, read up on the last great gaming rivalry between Call of Duty and Battlefield and learn how to play the Call of Duty games in chronological order.