Black Ops III: A Call of Duty Story (2026 film)

Premise
Based on the third game in the Black Ops series, and a sequel to Black Ops: A Call of Duty Story and Black Ops II: A Call of Duty Story, Black Ops III: A Call of Duty Story tells a story in a dark future where technology in warfare has blurred the lines of morality and reality.

As with the other films in the series, the story follows that of the game for the most part, but includes minor changes in the narrative and pacing.

Filming and Release
Black Ops III: A Call of Duty Story will be filmed on location in Los Angeles, Toronto, and Dubai.

The film is set for a release sometime in June 2026 and was once again produced under Universal Studios.

Cast and Crew
Like the other films in the series, director Doug Liman insisted that most of the voice actors from the game reprise their roles. He also said in an interview that he chose to use a female protagonist to avoid "[making] the same movie three times over." Directed by: Doug Liman
 * Ginnifer Goodwin as The Player
 * Sean Douglas as Jacob Hendricks
 * Christopher Meloni as John Taylor
 * Jessica Chastain as Rachel Kane
 * Katee Sackhoff as Sarah Hall
 * Ary Katz as Peter Maretti
 * Reynaldo Gallegos as Sebastian Diaz
 * Robert Picardo as Sebastian Krueger
 * Noshir Dalal as Zeyad Khalil
 * Tony Amendola as Yousef Salim
 * Emiliano Diez as Said
 * John DiMaggio as the voice of CORVUS

Music by: Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor

Plot Synopsis
In 2065, a unnamed new member of a hostage rescue team (who will be referred to as Player) under the command of Jacob Hendricks, is on a mission to recover a member of the Egyptian Army who is being held by African super-pact. After securing the prisoner, Player and Hendricks insist on freeing the other prisoners, but John Taylor, member of another team on the same mission, doesn't like the idea. Eventually, the two teams meet up, and Hendricks convinces Taylor and his team of cybernetically-enhanced soldiers, including Sebastian Diaz, Peter Maretti, and Sarah Hall, to save the others. However, in their extraction, Player is left behind, and has her arms and legs torn off by a robot. Taylor then reassures her and gets her out.

Player awakens inside of a simulation, where Taylor tells her that she is receiving a surgery for a DNI (Direct Neural Interface) that will give her cybernetic abilities. She tests out the abilities and awakens from her coma.

While it is not fully revealed in the film until the very end, the truth is that Player dies as a result of her injuries, and what she experiences is merely her brain making sense of Taylor's memories, them having been transferred to her when he entered her mind. Prior to 2065, Taylor and Hendricks, with the aid of Kane, were dispatched to kill 4 of their former squadmates, who, in the context of the simulation, have been re-imagined as Diaz, Maretti, Hall, and Taylor. Subtle hints at this grow more and more overt as the film progresses.

5 years pass by, during which Player and Hendricks (who also received a DNI) work various missions for the CIA, mostly hunting down and assassinating targets. A short montage shows them taking down 3 male soldiers and a female soldier.

In 2070, Player and Hendricks are tasked by the CIA to find Jae Xiong, an operative that suddenly went dark in Singapore. They are teamed up with Officer Rachel Kane. After fighting the 54 Immortals, a gang that controls most of Singapore, they discover a CIA black site that has been attacked, and its inhabitants, including Jae Xiong, slaughtered in a ritualistic manner. However, the footage from the station's security cameras was erased.

Then, Player and Hendricks head to Xiong's last mission location, the devastated former center of the Coalescence Corporation. There, they discover a secret CIA project, wherein dozens of people were forcibly experimented on, as part of the creation of the DNI. While diving deeper into the building, they are attacked by rouge robots, eventually finding Sebastian Diaz plugged into the mainframe, controlling the bots and leaking secret CIA information to the world. Hendricks extracts intel from Diaz through "interfacing", a method of pulling info through a DNI.

After escaping from the collapsing facility, Kane calls to tell them that that Diaz's leaks showed that Taylor's team was behind the CIA black station, but also that the 54 Immortals are quickly zoning in on her position, since the leak also revealed the location of all of the CIA's safe houses. Despite Hendricks' protests, they agree to go and rescue her.

After fighting through the 54i controlled city, the safe house erupts into fire. Hendricks insists that Kane is dead, but Player rushes in anyways, shoving Kane's attackers into the fire and saving her.

Having no luck finding Taylor's team, the three travel to Egypt to interrogate Dr. Salim, the lead scientist on the Singapore Coalescence project. After failing to get anything out of him, Taylor's team breaks in and captures him, but Player reveals she slipped him a tracker in his water.

The three find Salim, but he has already been killed, and Taylor and Maretti have fled, leaving only Hall behind. Player interfaces with Hall, but something goes wrong.

Inside of Hall's mind, Player learns all about the DNI virus that Taylor's team contracted from the Singapore center, and how it controlled them. After fending off the remnants of Hall's mind, including WW2 soldiers and zombies, Hall begs for Player to kill her to end the suffering. Player does so and is returned back into the real world, now knowing where Maretti and Taylor are located.

Kane and Player grow closer, and discuss their mutual distrust of Hendricks as he grows more unstable.

With the aid of the Egyptian Army, Hendricks and Jennings invade the occupied city of Cairo to find Maretti and Taylor. After struggling with hallucinations, Player apprehends Maretti, but is forced to kill him when he attacks.

Player, now separated from Hendricks, is pinned by Taylor. But instead of killing her, Taylor uses his last bit of sanity to tear out his DNI, but Hendricks shoots him and leaves in a ship.

Player, injured from an explosion, is taken to a hospital by Kane, who pleads with her to let the military take care of Hendricks and for her to receive medical care to cure the virus. However, when Player refuses to do so, Kane only asks her to remember her, and leaves behind her bandana.

Now in Zurich, where the new Coalescence HQ is, Player meets up with the Zurich Security Forces and Kane, who seemingly had a change of heart. After fighting a swarm of robots controlled by Hendricks, Player and Kane enter the HQ, where Hendricks has massacred the staff.

The two discover that Hendricks plans to release Nova 6 into the city. Kane enters the chamber to manually stop the gas, but the gas is released by a fail-safe and Kane is killed by it.

Player, heartbroken over Kane's death, goes to confront Hendricks, who kills Sebastian Krueger, the CEO of Coalescence. Player shoots Hendricks, and then herself, reminded of the promise she made to Kane to stop the virus at all costs.

Upon dying, Player finds herself in the Frozen Forest, where those infected with the virus, now naming itself Corvus, can live on beyond death. While forced to fight Hendricks, Hall, Diaz, Maretti, and numerous soldiers manifested by Corvus, Player encounters a friendly Taylor, who fights on her side. Eventually, Player escapes from the Forest and purges her DNI, leaving her free of the virus.

In reality, Taylor stands over Player in the hospital, lamenting her death. When Taylor asks what Player's cause of death is, Corvus claims it was a technical error, leading Taylor to realize that Krueger pulled the plug on Player's life support shortly after her arrival.

After holstering a pistol, and with blood on his face, a remorseful Taylor sends a message to Kane while readying a knife in front of a mirror to tear out his DNI.

Possible future films
While Doug Liman has not expressed any interest in directing any more Call of Duty films, rumors have circulated that Universal and Activision were in talks to produce more films.

Possible topics include a World at War film focused on Reznov, a film centered around the original zombies characters, and another film centered around Oscar Issac's Raul Menendez.

In December of 2026, a leaked script for a zombies film entitled Tranzit was posted on Reddit, with Ernie Hudson, Rob Riggle, Justin Long, and Mandy Moore supposedly attached to the project (as Russman, Stulingher, Marlton, and Misty, respectively). The screenplay was received as clever and well-written, but was not deemed bankable enough by Universal and was cancelled during pre-production.

Sean Douglas, who portrayed Hendricks, and Jessica Chastain, who portrayed Kane, both mentioned in interviews that they had been signed to multi-picture contracts, but both claimed to have no knowledge of any sequels as of yet.