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And within each of those games are multiple different game modes, so where does Paramount even begin? This is a huge, risky undertaking, but there is a way for them to be successful. There are quite a few great stories buried within a game franchise that has sadly become more known as lazy, or “slop.” Paramount needs to find the right one and go with it, and here’s exactly how they can do it.
The Call of Duty Movie Needs to Focus on One Game’s Story to Work
If Paramount is going to adapt Call of Duty to the big screen, they would be best served to hone in on the campaign mode rather than anything else. In each game, for the most part, there’s a short story mode to progress through. There are roughly 20 campaigns throughout the entire series, so where would Paramount even begin? To make things easier, they really need to hone in on just one of the games, maybe two if they can’t tell the story satisfyingly with just one.
Call of Duty campaigns do generally follow a bit of a storyline. The Black Ops series of games has followed a loose storyline that has built up to this point, and Black Ops 7 is reportedly going to directly follow the events of both Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 6 (Black Ops 2 is a direct sequel to the original). The same difficulty can be found in the Modern Warfare line as well. There’s just too much to draw from, so any Call of Duty movie would be better served by picking one. Black Ops makes the most sense.
It’s the beginning of the story, so it would naturally lead to sequels, which is almost assuredly what Paramount has its eye on. A one-off movie from a franchise of games that literally releases a new one every single year would be a major surprise—and a bit of a let down. This is going to be a franchise, so in order to do that correctly, the seeds have to be planted by starting at the beginning and going from there. Maybe the events of Black Ops 2 could be included, but that’s pushing it since the original campaign in the first game is roughly seven hours.
The alternative to bringing an existing story to the screen is to do an original story in the Call of Duty universe, but that’s a nonsensical plan. Why bother buying the rights to a game franchise if you’re just going to discard all the characters and storylines? That would just be a regular war movie with a Call of Duty skin. And while that might work for one movie, it would leave the already existing fan base feeling disconnected. That’s not a recipe for success, so they need to draw directly from the games, and the best way to do that is to go as small as possible and start from the beginning.
Paramount isn’t required to pick the Black Ops line to start with, either. They can easily do the Modern Warfare storyline, but that one just isn’t as immediately great as the Black Ops campaign narrative. Black Ops features a major plot twist that’s begging for the big screen, whereas Modern Warfare‘s best narrative arguably came in the second game. To avoid a slow start, Black Ops makes the most sense. That doesn’t preclude Paramount from making a Modern Warfare adaptation in the future, though.
For Now, Paramount Should Ignore Zombies
For what it’s worth, the storyline that runs through all zombies in Call of Duty is far more interesting than the vast majority of campaign storylines. If Paramount wants to get the most fascinating movie out there first, then zombies is the way to go. However, that would not be very wise. Zombie movies are inherently a little less palatable to general audiences, and while war movies aren’t easily digestible, either, that’s a much safer start to get the franchise running.
