Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions’ upcoming Helldivers adaptation has found its director in Justin Lin, best known for his work on the Fast and Furious franchise.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Lin will also produce the flick under his Perfect Storm Entertainment banner, alongside Hutch Parker (Logan) and PlayStation Productions’ Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan. The movie’s script will be written by Gary Dauberman, who previously wrote horror hits such as the Annabelle and It franchises.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter’s sources, Lin admits that he is not a gamer, but says it’s a strength when pitching his take on the Helldivers IP, with his aim being to “find the humanity in the characters and weave timely themes into the story, while building out a world and mythology.
The Helldivers gaming franchise, which began with the 2015 isometric shooter and received a sequel, 2024’s Helldivers 2, are a series of multiplayer cooperative live-service shooters which centres on an elite unit of orbital shock troopers, who must land on different planets to combat enemies such as the Terminids, the Automatons, and the Illuminate to defend the faux-democratic empire of Super Earth.
Apart from helming multiple entries in the Fast and Furious franchise, such as 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and 2021’s F9, Lin also has experience with the sci-fi franchise with his work on 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, the final film in the rebooted Star Trek trilogy, so it will be interesting to see his take on the Helldrivers franchise, and whether he can use his past expertise to mirror the game’s tongue-in-cheek humour with bombastic action sequences.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Natalie
Si Jia
