Helldivers 2 Director Calls Renewed Interest in Starship Troopers After Game Success 'Incredible'
Helldivers 2 director Johan Pilestedt has commented on the "incredible" impact the squad-based shooter has seemingly had on the viewership of the 1997 sci-fi action film Starship Troopers.
Pilestedt shared a post on X/Twitter showing that Starship Troopers rose through the ranks from 109 to 45 as the "most popular movie online" (ranked by engagement score) as of February 17. The statistics provided are courtesy of Television Stats, a website that tracks data and shares performance metrics for various titles.
This is incredible! https://t.co/UmreTNdMhj
Helldivers 2 became available on PlayStation 5 and PC on February 8 and quickly surpassed God of War to become Sony's biggest ever game launch on Steam. It also immediately drew comparisons to Starship Troopers, the 1959 novel of the same name and 1997 Paul Verhoeven film adaptation, for its patriotic pageantry and alien bugs.
As a result, Helldivers 2 and Starship Troopers have been hot topics on social media over the past week or so, with many finding Starship Troopers again (or even for the first time) and giving credit to Helldivers 2 for reigniting the discourse around the movie, causing both titles to feature in the trending lists on X/Twitter.
Starship Troopers and Helldivers 2 both trending at the same time.
