‘Helldivers’ Movie On The Way From ‘Fast And Furious’ Franchise Director, Pitch Reportedly Accepted Because He “Is Not A Gamer”
In waving the reddest flag possible ahead of Super Earth’s next major deployment, a live-action Helldivers film is now in production under the helm of Fast and Furious franchise director Justin Lin, whose winning pitch reportedly “leaned into” the fact that he has absolutely zero familiarity with the video game medium, let alone Arrowhead Game Studios’ acclaimed democracy simulator.
Confirmed as in development courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit, the Helldivers movie will see Lin working off of a script provided by It duology and Annabelle series writer Gary Dauberman, as produced by Sony Pictures, their subsidiary PlayStation Productions, and Lin’s own Perfect Storm Entertainment.
And while a blockbuster, spectacle-heavy outing for the Helldivers franchise seems like the easiest lay-up in the world, fans would do best to hold their excitement, as according to Kit’s insider sources, “Lin is not a gamer and leaned into that as a strength when pitching his take on the material”.
“He aims to find the humanity in the characters and weave timely themes into the story, while building out a world and mythology,” the THR mainstay further relayed. “There are plenty of details waiting to be drawn in, something that is compelling to the filmmaker.”
To be fair, while the idea of handing full creative control over a given adaptation to someone completely unfamiliar with its source material sounds unforgivably absurd on paper, such a practice is both extremely common and exceptionally helpful, as they not only understand the unique language and audience appeal of their chosen medium, but are also more freely able to take bigger narrative swings thanks to their lack of attachment to the characters.
For example, Captain America: First Avenger director Joe Johnston has openly admitted that he “was not a fan” of the Star-Spangled Avengers’ comic book adventures (not that he disliked them, just that he didn’t care about them).
Likewise, despite having “never been a gigantic comic book fan“, director Tim Burton still managed to both capture and redefine The Dark Knight’s character in Batman (1989).
However, what makes the Helldivers movie case, and others like it, so particularly concerning is the fact that Lin is basically bragging about the fact that he has never cared to engage with either the original games or the video game medium in general – to say nothing of the fact that this was apparently a significant factor in Sony’s decision to hand him the job.
As history has shown, when ‘willful ignorance’ is the selling point for a project, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the end result being a complete disaster.
Just look at Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 4 implosion, which occurred amidst a studio mentality that considered it a “red flag” for prospective screenwriters to have a previously-established “love” for the original comics.
At current, Sony’s Helldivers movie does not yet have a prospective release date.
