How ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’ Tees Up Taylor Sheridan’s Movie

November will bring arguably the most highly anticipated piece of media of all time in Grand Theft Auto VI, but October’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 release on Xbox and PCs was no indie drop. The latest CoD game will also serve as unofficial ambassador for Xbox’s newest division, XP, to the broader entertainment ecosystem.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 came out on Oct. 23 — it has been well-reviewed and well-monetized. As of this writing, Metacritic has aggregated critics’ takes to an 86 Metascore, which is quite strong; IGN gave it a 7. Modern Warfare 4 quickly pushed the CoD franchise beyond the $40 billion lifetime revenue mark, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma revealed on Monday. (At our last update in 2025, the games had combined for $35 billion in sales.)

Worldwide, Call of Duty games crossed half-a-billion units in sales two years ago, when the series became the best-selling first-person shooter franchise ever. We’re way beyond that today. (The mobile game alone, which is what exactly nobody thinks about when talking CoD, has been downloaded more than a billion times.)

It’s music to Sharma’s ears and catnip for Kayleen Walters, the president of XP.

XP is the new division dedicated to pairing owned Xbox IP with Hollywood producers to adapt popular video games and franchises for film, television and beyond. (Theme parks, experiences, events, etc.) Crossing thresholds in a big way in 2028 will be a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare feature film from Peter Berg and Taylor Sheridan (the Yellowstone universe).

“The greatest gaming franchises are more than stories. They’re worlds people belong to, help shape, and carry with them. The connection between players and these expansive worlds is unlike anything else in entertainment,” Walters told The Hollywood Reporter. “With XP, our ambition is to honor what makes these worlds extraordinary and work with the best creative partners to bring their magic to life in new ways, for the communities who love them today and the audiences who will discover them next.”

Given the Call of Duty games’ regular rotational cadence, Modern Warfare 4 ought to be the last major in-universe game before the movie comes out. So there was additional pressure here to get it right.

“You kind of got your heart in your throat and you’re just waiting for it to go live,” Jack O’Hara, the co-head of Call of Duty video game studio Infinity Ward, told THR. When it finally did, it was “surreal.” Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 was in development for four years.

O’Hara says he had “a feeling” the game would be well-received. Now it’s his job that keep the good times rolling.

Today, major AAA video game releases are living organisms. When he first worked with the Call of Duty team in 2009 (joining them full time three years later), the life cycle of video games was very different. For starters, they usually stayed as video games only. When development was done and all the tests passed, you’d “print a disc” and “everybody would go on vacation,” O’Hara said.

Not anymore — there are hardly even discs. These days, the “sense of relief” of publishing a game at long last linger for “about eight hours,” O’Hara said. O’Hara and his team will be updating and supporting the live Modern Warfare 4 for the next year.

It “can be exhausting,” he said.

Just wait until the movie enters production. O’Hara says he won’t personally meddle (too much) in the blockbuster film, a collaboration between Activision (the Microsoft subsidiary that directly owns Infinity Ward) and Paramount Pictures — but he’s there if you need him.

It’s “important” for the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare movie “to stand on its own,” O’Hara said, and it’s equally crucial “for people who own a creative project to own it.”

For Xbox, it’s important to find new audiences and revenue streams. The company has recently laid off thousands of employees and consolidated or outright shuttered numerous development banners. Console sales are down, profit margins are on GLP-1s and subscriptions are carrying the world on their shoulders. It’s a war zone out there.

The Call of Duty movie is just one piece of Xbox’s plan to invade Hollywood. The deployment of intellectual property predates the formation of XP. It even predates Sharma’s succession of Phil Spencer.

Last year’s biggest film in terms of box office ($960 million worldwide) was A Minecraft Movie, a Microsoft and Warner Bros. feature film. A sequel, A Minecraft Movie: Squared was wisely rush ordered and will come out next year. Though it already has a studio (WB, now owned by Skydance, will remain the label), XP will shepherd the franchise’s expansion into theme parks and a coming Netflix animated series.

To a lesser — but not unimpressive — degree, Fallout (the Xbox-owned Bethesda Studios in collaboration with Amazon MGM Studios) has found success in TV form on Amazon’s Prime Video platform. Next to try the jump are the extensions of Gears of War (as a Netflix movie), Wolfenstein (a TV series at Amazon) and Diablo (a Netflix animated series). Down the road a bit is a collaboration with Kojima Productions on PHYSINT and OD, two new gaming projects with Hideo Kojima (Kojima owns the IP) that also include film and TV rights, and at least another half-dozen unannounced adaptations of Xbox games in the works, THR is told. Other popular Xbox-owned franchises include Warcraft, Candy Crush, Forza, The Elder Scrolls, Halo and Spyro.

Halo, we should point out, already tried and (mostly) failed as a television show. The Showtime-turned-Paramount+ series, a joint effort that also included Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, was plagued with issues from the jump. Following 10 years(!) of development, Halo ended up with a first time showrunner and not enough in common with the popular game. Season two would bring a new showrunner and a disappointing end to the series. Halo wasn’t a bad show per se — Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic both have more positive than negative reviews — but its lack of authenticity to the world the games had created turned off established fans.

Fallout learned from the sins of its cousin.

Todd Howard’s approach to adapting Fallout was “full authenticity — treat it the same way we would any major game entry,” the Bethesda Game Studios head and TV show’s executive producer tells THR. “Finding a creative partner to do that is the essential element, and we found that in Jonathan Nolan (Westworld) and a team who have done an absolutely mindblowing job.”

Fallout has been renewed for a third season and has an unscripted competition companion series in the works.

Clearly, good games can make for good film and TV. There are also reciprocal returns. During season one of Fallout on Prime Video, hours played across Fallout titles on Xbox Game Pass increased 5x, Xbox says, and following A Minecraft Movie, the Minecraft video game saw a 75 percent year-over-year increase in weekly active users.