Electronic Arts’ “Battlefield” is drawing fire from all sides as five studios have submitted bids for the Christopher McQuarrie/Michael B. Jordan package, with Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon MGM Studios, Sony, Universal and Netflix all in the fight for what is shaping up to be the biggest bidding war of the year, The Wrap has exclusively learned.
McQuarrie is set to write, direct and produce an adaptation of the bestselling video game series, while recent “Sinners” Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan is onboard to produce and potentially star.
The first video game in the series, “Battlefield 1942,” launched for PC and Mac in 2002. Since then, the series went from computer platforms to video game consoles and has covered everything from Vietnam to the far future. Last year’s “Battlefield 6” was rumored to be one of the most expensive video games ever created and became the bestselling game of last year (and of the entire franchise).
Video games are having a moment, with a number of high-profile projects in the works at every studio and “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” from Illumination, Nintendo and Universal, a certifiable blockbuster and the biggest movie of 2026 so far, with $764 million worldwide.
Other video game-based movies set for release this year include New Line Cinema’s “Mortal Kombat II,” Sony’s “Resident Evil” and Paramount’s “Street Fighter,” along with a new “Angry Birds” movie (also from Paramount). Next year will see the highly anticipated release of “The Legend of Zelda” from Nintendo and Sony.
And the “Battlefield” package comes as Paramount is readying its own feature film adaptation of rival video game franchise “Call of Duty,” which has Taylor Sheridan and Peter Berg set to write and Berg onboard to direct.
McQuarrie is coming off of directing the last two “Mission: Impossible” movies — “Dead Reckoning” and “The Final Reckoning” — back to back through COVID and strikes, and has spent the better part of the last decade embedded in that franchise.
The Oscar-winning “The Usual Suspects” screenwriter struck up a close relationship with Tom Cruise while working on “Valkyrie” and later “Edge of Tomorrow,” at which time Cruise decided he’d be a good fit for what became “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” and he broke with precedent by directing the next three installments of the franchise. Before “Rogue Nation,” McQuarrie directed Cruise in 2012’s “Jack Reacher.”
A rep for Electronic Arts declined to comment.
