Helldivers 2 Developer Won’t Have Final Say On Movie’s Creative Decisions

Sony Productions and Sony Pictures announced during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 that a movie adaptation of Helldivers is currently in production at the company. Sony has had a mixed filmmaking record, producing the lauded Across the Spiderverse and the torrid Madame Web within a year of one another. The subsidiary handling the Helldivers movie is PlayStation Productions, which has released Uncharted, Gran Turismo, The Last of Us and Twisted Metal.

With this in mind, fans have asked Arrowhead Studios if they’ll be involved in the movie adaptation. The studio’s creative director Johan Pilestedt responded to one such questioner, admitting he’d been “dodging” the question in the days since the movie’s announcement (nice spot, GamesRadar+).

Arrowhead Will Be Involved

“Hey! I’ve been dodging this question. The short answer is yes,” Pilestedt writes. “The long answer is that we’ll see. We are not Hollywood people, and we don’t know what it takes to make a movie. And therefore we don’t, and shouldn’t, have final say.”

Pilestedt’s answer is intentionally vague, suggesting that Sony and Arrowhead have yet to hash out the specifics of the adaptation. We’ve seen the studio and its parent company clash in the past, specifically when Sony mandated that all Helldivers 2 players must have their PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts connected to play online despite the service not being available in every country.

PlayStation Productions head Asad Qizilbash provided no additional details about the movie following his unveiling of the project at CES. We don’t know if the adaptation is going to be live-action or animated, either. PlayStation Productions has trended towards live-action projects but is also working on an anime based on Ghost of Tsushima.

From the sounds of it, Arrowhead is going to be in an advisory role. The team will probably consult on lore and other matters, but won’t have any creative control over the narrative or presentation of the adaptation.

Helldivers itself is heavily inspired by Starship Troopers, a movie adaptation of a novel by Robert A. Heinlein. Although Heinlein’s novel was presented sincerely, the movie adaptation was a satirised take on the author’s work. This was the inspiration for Helldivers 2, a comedically presented war between humankind and aliens where the humans unquestioningly follow a fascist government masquerading as “managed democracy.”

Presumably, this is the tone that the movie will try and convey. If I had to guess, I’d predict that PlayStation Productions is creating an ultraviolent black comedy of sorts. For now, there is very little information on the project so we’ll just have to wait and see how the movie develops.

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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.