Call of Duty is big business - A Movie, sales and a new developer?

Modern Warfare 2 is a bit over a week old now and it has been a resounding success for Activision and Infinity Ward both on the sales front and with the critics as well.  For some fans it is a mixed bag, largely due the "consolization" of the PC version, but for most the game is a hit.  My review is finished and I'll be sure to toss it up for your critical consumption tomorrow some time.

The release of the game hasn't stopped the Call of Duty news flow.  First up is word from the Hollywood front.  Current rumors from Kevin McKidd, aka Captain "Soap" MacTavish in Modern Warfare 2, is that a Call of Duty movie is in the works and he may be brought in to reprise his role for the feature film.  Now this is obviously from an actor who has little pull behind the scenes when it comes to studios and financing so we probably have to take this with a grain of salt.  Activision has mentioned a desire in the past to take Call of Duty to the silver screen so it may not be a total stretch.

I am not really sold on another video-game-to-movie adaption, especially with the budget that is going to be required to make this a faithful transition to film.  There are tons of fantastic modern war films that this will be held up against like Saving Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down so whatever studio picks this up has their work cut out for them.

Rumors out of the L.A. Times has a mention of a third developer taking up the reigns of the Call of Duty series as well.  According to the Times:


Will another developer join Infinity Ward and Treyarch in making new Call of Duty games?  Will they move to a new-every-three system for each studio?  It could also be that we see the often talked about COD MMO coming out of these rumors or the new studio could simply be working on PSP/iPhone/DS versions. 

And just in case you were curious as to how big the launch of Modern Warfare 2 was check out these figures from IGN.  The game did 550 million dollars in its first week beating:

• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince's 5-day world-wide total
• The Dark Knight's 5-day domestic total
• Grand Theft Auto 4's previous hold on 5-day sales
• And more sales first day than GTA4 had as well.

Check out the link for more details on the figures including some impressive Xbox Live numbers contributed by Microsoft as well.

What game could top these numbers?  It would almost have to be a multi-platform release to top these numbers as I don't see an exclusive pulling these kinds of numbers.  Grand Theft Auto 5 maybe?