Robert Hanashiro / USA TODAY NETWORK/Activision/Infinity War/Sledgehammer Games/
A new documentary about the chaotic development and release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 — the 44th highest-selling video game of all-time with $26.5 million in sales, ahead of even Grand Theft Auto IV and Marvel’s Spider-Man — has revealed the type of project that legendary director Steven Spielberg pitched based on the iconic IP.
According to the documentarian, video game journalist Cade Onder, legendary director Steven Spielberg — the filmmaker behind iconic movies such as Jurassic Park, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jaws, Saving Private Ryan, and more — was such a longtime fan of the Call of Duty series that he came to Infinity Ward’s offices during Modern Warfare 3‘s development to get an early glimpse of the game’s New York level.
Steven Spielberg was so obsessed with the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise that he pitched the developers on directing a movie based on the IP
“Steven is awesome. We met with him several times. I remember one time Steven coming over playing the mission we showed at E3 — and it is a very Spielberg mission,” explained Robert Bowling, former Creative Strategist from Infinity Ward.
“It’s a mission where you start off in the subs and you go to the boats and then you fight your way into the ship. You have the two keys, you put them in, it launches the missiles, and then you got to get in the buoys and you’re doing a running chase scene as the missiles are coming down, destroying the ships that you were just on. It’s the escape from the Battle of New York,” he continued.
“I remember he came over and the first time we showed him that — this is before release, obviously — and he was just talking about, he’s like, ‘Oh, I love the way that you guys tell story through action.’ And I was like, ‘No, we’re just doing what you do.’ Like, this is a self-compliment. You’re telling us you love that we do it how you do it. When we moved into the modern era with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, there was a lot of interest — it seemed — for Steven to want to sort of understand how to tell that story. On my side there was a lot of hope that Steven would want to make a Call of Duty movie. That was my dream — can his art influence our art and then go back again. But it never did. We never got a Steven Spielberg Call of Duty, which would have been awesome.”
The acclaimed Schindler’s List auteur was so enamored with Call of Duty, in fact, that he even made a pitch to Activision to make a movie based on the Modern Warfare era. As those with knowledge of the pitch at the time tell it, it would have been set in the modern day — more akin to Black Hawk Down than Saving Private Ryan.
“And it is true, right? You pull inspiration all the time. Generation Kill on HBO — how phenomenal was that? This partnership that was developing between Hollywood and interactive entertainment was really powerful. You can’t think of many more compliments than saying that Spielberg thought you delivered something creatively exceptional. That’s something you don’t forget,” added Michael Condrey, a co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, one of the main studios that works on Call of Duty.
“It was one of the best compliments I could ever get. Because we talk about environmental storytelling all the time,” concurred his partner and co-founder Glen Schofield.
The full nearly two-hour-long doc, Inside the Chaotic Development of Modern Warfare 3 – A Documentary, is now available to stream on YouTube. You can also check it out below.