Helldivers Movie Lands Fast & Furious Director Justin Lin

Helldivers is preparing to launch a dropship to a theater near you via an upcoming film adaptation, and it just landed a big-time director. Justin Lin, best known for directing several installments in the Fast & Furious franchise, will helm the project.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, the Helldivers movie comes from Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions, with Justin Lin’s Perfect Storm Entertainment helping produce. Lin’s credits include directing most of the installments in the Fast & Furious series, starting with The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) and continuing with Fast & Furious (2009), Fast Five (2011), Fast & Furious 6 (2013), F9 (2021), and Fast X (2023).

According to THR’s sources, Lin is not a gamer and is leveraging this in his pitch to “find the humanity in the characters and weave timely themes into the story, while building out a world and mythology.” The script for Helldivers is penned by Gary Dauberman, the writer behind the It and Annabelle franchises, as well as The Nun. Dauberman also wrote this year’s Until Dawn, so Helldivers will be his second video game adaptation.

Helldivers 2

Given that Helldivers is essentially a video game version of the cult classic film Starship Troopers, turning it into a movie does feel like the snake eating its tail. Helldivers centers on soldiers hailing from Super Earth, an uber-patriotic managed democracy, who defend the planet in an intergalactic war against alien bugs, as well as killer robots and other threats. The first game was released for the PlayStation 4 in 2015, and Helldivers 2 arrived on PlayStation 5 in 2024 to widespread acclaim and popularity.

The Helldivers movie does not have a specific release date or window. In the meantime, check out our reviews for Helldivers and Helldivers 2. You can also read about other upcoming video game adaptations, including a new fifth Sonic the Hedgehog film, Call of Duty, and PlayStation’s own Horizon Zero Dawn. 

[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]