Spielberg wanted to direct that Call of Duty movie

The Call of Duty movie deal that Paramount signed could have gone to Steven Spielberg, according to a new report. Inked this week, Paramount and Activision have done a deal for at least one Call of Duty movie and a potential TV show. So why didn’t they go with Spielberg and his studio, Amblin Entertainment?

Well, it appears that Activision got cold feet with the famed Indiana Jones director over creative control. The Microsoft-owned company apparently didn’t want to sign on the dotted line because Spielberg required “top-of-market economics, final cut, and control over production and marketing.”

Instead, the recently merged Paramount has acquired the deal thanks to what Puck News attributes to CEO “David Ellison’s pitch”.

Spielberg is known to be a fan of the ol’ video games, and has, in fact, produced or been involved with the development of a few. Most famously, he’s credited with coming up with the basis of Medal of Honor when it was under DreamWorks Interactive in 1999. He was also involved with the writing of the last SCUMM game, The Dig, with LucasArts.

Remember Boom Blox? I bet Spielberg doesn’t

I believe the last game he was fully involved with was as “Creative Director” on Wii games, Boom Blox and Boom Blox Bash Party. This was the only released title out of the supposed EA-Spielberg three-game deal that was announced in 2007. They’d been working on this since 2005 and had also announced LMNO, which was ultimately canceled after the deal sort of meandered after the mediocre Boom Blox.

LMNO was supposed to be one of those big AAA games, with a trailer and everything of what they wanted the game to look like. There were quite a few of these during this era, with Spielberg’s LMNO destined to follow the rest as obscure trailers on YouTube uploaded in 360p. The tagline was “Can a computer game make you cry?” I’m sure it wouldn’t have, but according to an interview with No Clip, the game would have featured no gunplay as a requirement by the director himself.

While not necessarily involved with games all that much in recent years, he did direct that absolutely god-awful Ready Player One, an adaptation of the embarrassing book of the same name.

The Call of Duty movie is set to release at some point, with no dates or any information attached to it. But hey, maybe Spielberg will make a Medal of Honor movie to go up against it? They could do it about those dudes with the beards from the 2010 reboot.