Fast & Furious director Justin Lin will helm a live-action film adaptation of PlayStation’s popular Helldivers video games. Lin is best known for directing five of the car-centric action movies, including the fan-favourite Fast Five, as well as 2016’s well-received Star Trek: Beyond, the final installment in the sci-fi series’ modern film trilogy.
The Hollywood Reporter first reported on the news, noting that Lin will approach the material as someone who isn’t a gamer. Instead, he is said to have plans to build up a cast of believable characters in a world with its own mythology.
It will be interesting to see what that all means, considering that Helldivers is already so inspired by movies. In particular, the two games heavily draw from Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers in their depiction of jingoistic military forces fighting bug-like creatures. In the games, the appeal was getting to live out that satirical action with other players, so it remains to be seen how a film adaptation might differentiate itself from Starship Troopers.
The movie will follow last year’s Helldivers 2, which was a huge hit for Sony in no small part due to its simultaneous release on PS5 and PC. While Sony made (and then reversed) some controversial PSN requirements for the game that impacted its rising popularity, it did get a big bump recently thanks to an Xbox port.
The Helldivers movie is also part of Sony’s broader push to adapt its various gaming properties through its PlayStation Productions division. To date, that has led to such titles as Sony Pictures’ Uncharted, Gran Turismo and Until Dawn films, as well as HBO’s The Last of Us and Universal’s Twisted Metal TV series.
PlayStation is also working on several other adaptations, including a God of War series on Prime Video and films based on Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima.
Image credit: PlayStation
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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