During CES 2025 in Las Vegas this week, Sony announced that Helldivers will be getting a movie from Sony Pictures. This is unsurprising news if you’ve been paying any attention to the industry. Sony has been milking its successful PlayStation IPs for all the money that can possibly be squeezed out of them – in the last few years alone, we’ve seen an Uncharted movie (not very good, but has a sequel in development), television adaptations of The Last of Us and Twisted Metal, and a Ghost of Tsushima movie directed by Chad Stahelski is also in the works. That’s just the confirmed stuff.
It was also announced at the show that Ghost of Tsushima is getting an anime from Crunchyroll and Aniplex, while Horizon Zero Dawn is getting a movie after its TV adaptation was reportedly cancelled last year.
Helldivers is a prime candidate for adaptation, if you look at it from a business perspective. It was the only one of PlayStation’s recent live-service games to really take off (or to succeed in any measure, really), and has proven to be consistently popular, maintaining a fairly healthy player count even as the attention on it tailed off. It’s undeniably one of PlayStation’s biggest successes of 2024, so of course Sony is capitalising on it.
So… Starship Troopers 2?
The logic starts to fail when you think about Helldivers’ roots. The game is heavily inspired by Starship Troopers, so much so that chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt commented on the increased viewership of the film after Helldivers 2’s release, calling it “incredible”.
Starship Troopers is a satirical film about fascism and imperialism, and Helldivers takes a lot from it. Both are set in the future, where Earth is governed by a military regime. Both have humans colonising the galaxy, fighting bug-like aliens. Both are campy and use humour to criticise the military-industrial complex.
Starship Troopers, in turn, is something of a criticism of the 1959 science fiction novel Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. The novel has been widely criticised for glorifying the military and has been frequently described as fascist – the film is a satire of the ideas in the book, making it less of an adaptation and more of a parody.
Paul Verhoeven’s film was a critical and commercial flop when it was released. Many critics didn’t understand that it was a satire, or criticised (fairly, perhaps) that its satire was muddled to the point of ineffectiveness. And yet, things are different now. The movie is a cult classic in its own right, having received widespread critical reevaluation since its release – some even think that the satire was prescient, predicting the evolution of American society in the decades to come.
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Is There A Point To A Helldivers Movie?
I love Helldivers 2 – anybody who knows me could tell you this. It took the ideas in Starship Trooper and very deftly used them as a compelling setting and thematic backdrop for an otherwise incredibly fun and even funnier game. In an industry filled with shooters that never bother to grapple with the ethical implications of their stories, Helldivers feels like a knowing wink at its audience. It’s clever.
But because of this, at its core, it’s pretty much an adaptation of Starship Troopers. The movie version already exists – it’s the source material. They might as well just re-release the film and throw in some clips of the Automatons. There’s really very little point to this apart from boosting the Helldivers brand, which, of course, is Sony’s entire intention. But if we’re talking creative value? I’m hard pressed to find anything here. We’re probably going to get a Starship Troopers reskin at best, and I can’t imagine anybody’s really looking forward to that.
Helldivers 2
Do you believe in freedom? Can you stand in the face of oppression – and defend the defenceless? Wage war for peace. Die for democracy.
Join forces with up to three friends and wreak havoc on an alien scourge threatening the safety of your home planet, Super Earth, in this multiplayer co-op shooter for PS5 and PC from Arrowhead Game Studios.
Step into the boots of the Helldivers, an elite class of soldiers whose mission is to spread peace, liberty and Managed Democracy using the biggest, baddest and most explosive tools in the galaxy.
Helldivers don’t go planet side without proper backup, but it’s up to you to decide how and when to call it in. Not only do you have a host of superpowered primary weapons and customizable loadouts, you also have the ability to call on stratagems during play.
Helldivers 2 features Arrowhead’s best cooperative gameplay yet. Collaboration will be vital: Teams will synergize on loadouts, strategize their approach for each mission and complete objectives together.1
Enlist in Super Earth’s premier military peacekeeping force today. We are heroes… we are legends… WE ARE HELLDIVERS.