Activision Blizzard, the videogame publishers behind the wildly popular Call of Duty franchise, is making a move toward building a cinematic universe. The game publisher announced in a presentation leading up to BlizzCon that the company would now expand into creating its own original television shows and movies via a new division called Activision Blizzard Studios. The news was perfectly timed given the release of the Warcraft trailer earlier today as well as the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops III.
Their first project would be the creation of a “robust cinematic universe” built around the Call of Duty videogame franchise and would include “a series of Call of Duty feature films as well as the possibility of television adaptations” with the first big screen release slated for 2018 or 2019.
Considering that the video game franchise has over 10 titles stretching from World War 2 all the way to future warfare, there is plenty of material to work with. The only problem is most of that material arguably isn’t the most intriguing or dense. People don’t typically play Call of Duty video games for their story, they play for the frenetic online multiplayer combat that is the hallmark of most of the games in the series.
Most of the stories from the recent installments revolve around shadow governments, conspiracy theories, international terrorism, future warfare, rogue agents, and of course over the top battles and combat. While it’s all the stuff of a damn fine blockbuster film holy shit the writing can be bad. Activision, when it comes to their Call of Duty video games, aren’t in the business to write stories like Aaron Sorkin but if they do want to adapt their franchise into film, they’d be wise to bring in some more experienced writers to fine tune any future material.
Activision Blizzard Studios actually has a project in production now: the TV adaptation of the Skylanders video game. The studio is adapting the popular and comical action game into a show called Skylanders Academy. Skylanders Academy will feature Justin Long as Spyro, Ashley Tisdale as Stealth Elf, Jonathan Banks as Eruptor, and Norm Macdonald as Glumshanks. A network has not been announced yet but considering the cast and that Futurama writer Eric Rogers will act as showrunner, Skylanders Academy is bound to get picked up by some network.
While it’s hard to say whether the news of this new “cinematic universe” is good, bad, or weird, it’s certainly interesting and Activision Blizzard is videogame behemoth. If any videogame company can pull this off let alone understandable make the jump to TV and movies, it’s them.
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