EA’s Battlefield franchise began 24 years ago with a World War II game, and the early word on the next installment will bring it back to the present. But will Battlefield head to Hollywood after that? Vince Zampella, the head of EA’s Respawn Entertainment, recently acknowledged that there is interest in adapting Battlefield, but not necessarily from EA or Respawn.
“There are definitely opportunities there,” Zampella told IGN. “We’ve had some discussions, but it’s not our core business. To me, that stuff, when it works, it’s super cool… Like Arcane was f**king great. But there’s other ones that haven’t worked as well and I won’t name those, but you know what they are… I would love to see it. Right now, we’re not looking at anything like that for Battlefield.”
Although there apparently aren’t any Battlefield adaptations in the works now, that wasn’t always the case. In 2016, Paramount Television and Anonymous Content signed a deal to bring Battlefield to television. That was proceeded by Fox’s attempt to adapt Battlefield for TV in 2012, which would have been an action-comedy based on Battlefield: Bad Company.
The big challenge for any Battlefield live-action adaptation would be to find a way to separate it from all of the other World War II, Vietnam, or modern war films and TV shows that came before it. To really stand out, it might be a better idea to adapt Battlefield 2042 or even Battlefield 2142, simply because those future war stories haven’t already been done so many times. But for now, it doesn’t appear that EA or Respawn are in any hurry to make that happen.
