The Helldivers movie adaptation has scored a pretty awesome director, but there is already one glaring issue that may bother fans. Helldivers 2 was easily the most surprising hit of 2024 when it was released on PS5 and PC. Helldivers was a decent hit when it was released on prior PlayStation hardware, but it was nowhere near as popular as its sequel. The second game was kind of an overnight hit, as there wasn’t a ton of buzz about it leading up to its release. However, word of mouth and viral social media posts helped Helldivers 2 spread like wildfire and turned it into a phenomenon.
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That then allowed PlayStation to feel confident in making a Helldivers movie. The project was announced at the start of 2024 alongside other PlayStation adaptations like a Horizon Zero Dawn film. However, Helldivers isn’t a story game and it’s heavily inspired by something like Starship Troopers. So, the question has been, what will the creative team do to bring this game to life? There’s a pretty well-established world to play with, which may actually lead to a more interesting adaptation than trying to translate a story, but we’ve been left to speculate. Now, things are spinning up for the movie.
Helldivers Movie Hires Justin Lin as Director Despite Not Being a Gamer
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, longtime Fast and Furious director Justin Lin (specifically best known for the better entries like Fast Five and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) will helm the Helldivers movie. Lin will direct the film based a script written by Gary Dauberman, the writer of It (2017) and the Annabelle films. He has also adapted another PlayStation game with the mixed Until Dawn film. However, there is one piece to this news that is sure to be divisive among fans.
The Hollywood Reporter noted that Justin Lin is admittedly not a gamer, but he leaned into this in his pitch for the project. Instead, Lin wants to find the humanity in the film’s characters and create “timely” themes. The games put a satirical spin on a fascist regime that uses patriotic propaganda to encourage people to sign up to invade the planets of other creatures, where they will likely be ripped apart. It’s possible that this is where Lin plans to place these “timely” themes. It’s also seen as a franchise for Lin to helm over the years, separate from something like Fast and Furious, which he abruptly left during the production of Fast X.
There have been some issues in the past with people who aren’t fans of video games coming in to adapt them. Lin is a talented action-filmmaker, but Helldivers has succeeded as a franchise because of emergent gameplay moments. Having someone who isn’t familiar with that or maybe doesn’t completely understand that is slightly concerning. Additionally, Arrowhead’s involvement on the Helldivers movie appears to be fairly limited with Helldivers 2 game director Johan Pilestedt claiming earlier this year they aren’t “Hollywood people”.
“We are not Hollywood people, and we don’t know what it takes to make a movie. And therefore we don’t, and shouldn’t, have final say.”
One other thing that may create issues is that Lin is attached to a lot of projects, including adaptations of One Punch Man and Brzrkr. It remains to be seen which of these projects he will tackle first and where Helldivers will fall in the roster. Ghost of Tsushima is also set to get a movie adaptation with John Wick filmmaker Chad Stahelski, but the movie has sat in development hell for years while the director has made John Wick 4, Highlander, and is attached to make a Rainbow Six film, and potentially, a John Wick 5. Hopefully, Helldivers doesn’t suffer the same fate.
At the moment, Helldivers 3 doesn’t seem to be in the works as developer Arrowhead has noted it will be working on something new for multiple platforms. It’s unclear what that might be and it will likely be years before we find out.
Helldivers currently has no release date. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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