ActivisionSomething strange is happening in the realm of video game adaptations. For some reason, TV game adaptations like Fallout and The Last of Us are veering more and more into serious and “prestige” territory, while movie adaptations like The Minecraft Movie or The Super Mario Bros. Movie swing the complete opposite way, adopting more goofs, memes, and scenes where Jack Black sings a silly song. But an upcoming movie may disrupt this pattern by bringing TV trends to a gritty movie video game adaptation, complete with one of the most popular showrunners working in television today penning the script. Taylor Sheridan will trade the Dutton Ranch for a foxhole by co-writing a Call of Duty movie. | Suzanne Cordeiro/ShutterstockAccording to Deadline, showrunner/creator of Yellowstone (and its many spinoffs), Taylor Sheridan, has signed on to co-write Paramount’s upcoming movie adaptation of Call of Duty, Activision’s massively popular video game franchise. Sheridan will write the script with director Peter Berg, whom he has worked with previously multiple times before, including on the acclaimed thriller Hell or High Water. Berg is an esteemed director, with experience with movies like Friday Night Lights and Hancock, and while he’s worked on combat action thrillers before like Lone Survivor, he doesn’t have the best of luck with game adaptation movies — he was the director behind the 2012 flop Battleship. Hopefully, Call of Duty’s existing reputation means this one will be a hit, not a miss. Peter Berg has attempted the combat-heavy game adaptation before with Battleship. | Battleship Delta Productions/Kobal/ShutterstockThis announcement comes in the wake of one of the biggest shakeups in TV: Sheridan, who had developed multiple series for Paramount and its subsidiaries, including Yellowstone, Tulsa King, and Landman, left the network and signed a five-year deal with NBCUniversal. Apparently, Paramount didn’t even make an offer to keep him, but clearly the company is still willing to work with him on certain projects like this movie.The real question is if this Call of Duty movie can not only do justice to the game but also prove there is space for a gritty video game movie in Hollywood. With the king of Western TV dramas and an experienced action director behind it, this could break the established pattern. In the words of another Peter Berg project: clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.