Jason Momoa will be headlining Sony’s new Helldivers movie which is set to release in late 2027. The star of Aqua Man and Minecraft has been in plenty of box office blockbusters, but has yet to prove if he’s as billable as the franchises he gets attached to. Sony, meanwhile, has yet to prove it can make a video game adaptation for theatrical release as successful as it has for TV.
The PlayStation-backed Helldivers movie will release on November 10, 2027 with Justin Lin of the Fast and Furious franchise directing. Momoa and Lin previously collaborated on Fast X which was critically panned but did fine at the box office. That over-the-top franchise certainly has parallels to Arrowhead Game Studios’ sci-fi parody of intergalactic war that’s loosely inspired by Starship Troopers, but deftly nailing the same tone as the hit PS5 and PC extraction shooter in a movie won’t be easy.
After breaking out with Game of Thrones, Momoa struggled to make Warner Bros. Aquaman movies even borderline watchable, before rebounding with the even more atrocious but extremely popular Minecraft movie. I’ve watched it enough times to know that my kids love it despite it lacking any semblance of a logical narrative throughline or coherent character arcs. Momoa is also playing Lobo in this year’s Supergirl.
The Helldivers movie is in production alongside a Horizon Zero Dawn adaptation that began as a Netflix series. Sony is also moving forward with seemingly one more season of HBO’s The Last of Us series and working on bringing God of War to streaming at Amazon. So far, however, PlayStation franchises turned big-screen blockbusters have been a mixed bag. 2022’s Uncharted was inoffensive but forgettable, and 2023’s Gran Turismo was merely fine.
As someone who Platinumed Helldivers 2 and loves the straightfaced goofiness of its fascist propaganda and rag-dolling space soldiers, I hope Sony can discover the right mix of horror and humor to make the whole thing work.
