Earlier this year we heard that Michael Fassbender will both star in and produce a movie adaptation of the video game Assassin’s Creed. Now Deadline reports that New Regency has made a deal to finance and distribute the film, with Ubisoft Motion Pictures (the newly launched film division of game publisher Ubisoft) having a large creative role in the development of the project.
Regency CEO Brad Weston had this to say:
“This is the perfect intersection of what we have been trying to do, and that is to work with top quality talent like Michael Fassbender. We see this as our first big commercial action franchise property. Fassbender just did 12 Years A Slave with us, and he is as good an actor as there is right now. The storyline we are pursuing has a great narrative and because Ubisoft’s games are so character- and story-driven, Assassin’s Creed lends itself perfectly to our goal to re-brand Regency as a filmmaker-driven company.”
The Assassin’s Creed franchise, first published in 2007, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and the latest, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, was released last year. The story follows a bartender named Desmond Miles who is captured by a secret corporation called Abstergo Industries and forced to go back in time to various historical periods such as the Renaissance and Crusades to relieve the memories of his ancestors — all assassins — in order to recover ancient artifacts. Revelations is set in 16th century Constantinople.
The next stage of the process will probably be getting a writer and director on-board. Fassbender isn’t short of directors wanting to work with him so we can expect a few interesting names to be thrown into the mix.
