Listen up you apes, because I’m only going to say this once — Sony has just announced that “Helldivers 2” is getting a movie adaptation … which is weird because “Starship Troopers” already exists.
The announcement was made at Sony’s CES 2025 press conference by the head of PlayStation Productions Asad Qizilbash, saying “I’m excited to announce we are working with Sony Pictures on developing a film adaptation of our amazingly popular PlayStation game “Helldivers 2.””
For the uninitiated (and potentially undemocratic), “Helldivers 2” is a cooperative third-person shooter in which loyal citizens of Super Earth (not an actual Super Earth, just a fancy name for regular Earth) battle against hordes of murderous bugs and savage robots. It was released in early 2024 on PS5 and PC, and it has been a runaway success for both Sony and the game’s developers, Arrowhead. It’s easy to see why too, because “Helldivers 2” is excellent. It’s equal parts gorgeous graphics, action-packed gunplay, and calling in airstrikes on top of teammates for kicks. Friendly fire is locked on, and that’s a feature, not a bug.
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The tone and storyline of “Helldivers 2” are heavily inspired by the 1997 Paul Verhoeven movie “Starship Troopers”. Humanity now lives under a “managed democracy” aka fascism in disguise, and there is a heavy coating of political satire draped over the whole thing.
As a result, we’ve already seen proof that Helldivers could be an amazing premise for a big-budget action movie. We’re hopeful that Arrowhead and Sony can work in a few surprises too, but given that it’s been 28 years since “Starship Troopers” came out, just doing the same sort of thing again but with modern technology seems like an easy slam dunk for Sony. It’s certainly more appealing than their continuous attempts to scrape the bottom of the “Spider-Man” villain barrel.
From Sony’s point of view, it’s easy to see why Helldivers was chosen as their next franchise to make the jump from video game to live-action. “Helldivers 2” is the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time, selling 12 million copies in just 12 weeks. Meanwhile, Sony has just come off the back of the hugely successful “The Last of Us” show on HBO Max, and even the Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland saw box office success despite a mixed reaction from critics.
Helldivers wasn’t the only game to get a silver screen announcement at CES, as sci-fi post-apocalyptic robot dinosaur-em-up “Horizon: Zero Dawn” is also getting a movie adaptation, with Sony collaborating with Columbia Pictures on this one.
If you haven’t volunteered to serve Super Earth yet, you can pick up Helldivers 2 on PC or PlayStation 5 now.
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