The video game movie train clearly has no intention of slowing down any time soon. No sooner have we got our oversized orc teeth into Duncan Jones' Warcraft adaptation, than a movie based on The Division pops up, starring Source Code's Jake Gyllenhaal. This is according to Variety who are citing sources that say Gyllenhaal isn't just set to star but also take on a producer role.
This isn't dissimilar to Michael Fassbender's situation on Assassin's Creed. He's in both producer and starring roles and Ubisoft's film branch has clearly taken the same approach when it comes to Gyllenhaal. When I spoke to ex head of Ubi Motion Pictures, Jean-Julien Baronnet, late last year he explained that they always find their leads first before anything else.
"We created Ubisoft Motion Pictures in a way where we wanted to have a big involvement in the movie, and what we have done for Assassin’s we will do for all the other movies, which is that at the beginning we started by choosing our actor, " he said. "Michael Fassbender was obvious. He was the Assassin and we didn’t talk with any other actors, we talked with him and he fell in love with the universe. And then we started to select with him some writers, and then – and only then – we started to find a studio, and we found New Regency."
While Ubi has gone very quiet on Tom Hardy's role in Splinter Cell, Baronnet did confirm that he was still involved last year. Gyllenhaal is another huge name for the company to pull in. It'll be interesting to see who steps into the director role. We'll keep you updated.
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