Helldivers Devs Hope the Movie Recruits A-List Cannon Fodder

Earlier this month, Sony revealed it’s planning to make live-action movies for Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers. The latter is a co-op shooter about space marines fighting aliens, and it’s not uncommon for sci-fi war movies to have big stars: your Tom Cruises, Chris Pratts, and the like. If it were up to execs at developer Arrowhead Game Studios, said movie would indeed bring in some big names…and then have them all die horribly.

Arrowhead recently held a Q&A on the Helldivers Discord, and some players had questions about the movie. When asked by one player, CEO Shams Jorjani said the studio “hopes for as many A-list actors as possible, as long as they all get killed violently immediately.” After the movie’s announcement, fans made joke fantasy castings that included Pratt, Jack Black, and Adam Sandler as creatures or non-descript marines from the game, like a Bile Titan. Jorjani’s comment has since spurred players to keep running with the joke, so now stars like Sean Bean, Aaron Paul, and Dwayne Johnson have been added into the cast mix. Got a star you’d wanna see get got in this movie? Tell us in the comments!

Less jokingly, Jorjani told another player that Arrowhead’s been kept in the loop on “some” stuff about the Helldivers movie. But he and CCO Johan Pilestedt think the studio’s involvement in the film should only go so far. On Twitter, Pilestedt recently explained the developers “are not Hollywood people, and we don’t know what it takes to make a movie. Therefore we don’t, and shouldn’t, have final say.” The amount of input game developers have on an adaptation varies: creators of Last of Us and League of Legends are heavily involved in those shows, while others have comparably less cooks in the kitchen.

When it comes to the finished product’s quality, that also varies, and there’s no hard science to determine how much creator input makes for a success in the eyes of both newcomers and longtime fans. It sounds like the Helldivers movie is currently in its earliest stages, if Sony even goes ahead with making it. But given these games’ influences, it feels like you’d have to try at adapting them wrongly.

[via VG247]

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.