Undeterred by the recent flops of Warcraft and The Angry Birds Movie, Hollywood studios continue to view video game movies as big business. Perhaps the one company that is firmly committed to bucking the age-old ‘curse’ that has resulted in a string of middling and forgettable adaptations is Ubisoft Motion Pictures, which has already aligned the star-studded Assassin’s Creed movie for release before the year’s end.
It’s undoubtedly one of, if not the crown jewel among Ubisoft roster of IP, but the French giant is also developing a live-action rendition of The Division, the post-pandemic MMO that first launched earlier this year.
Indeed, if the casting for Justin Kurzel’s Assassin’s Creed stoked excitement – Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard certainly make for enviable leads – news that The Division movie has plucked both Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain firmly puts Ubisoft’s new project on the map as one to keep an eye on.
Though firm details weren’t disclosed, we assume that Gyllenhaal and Chastain will enlist in the Strategic Homeland Division, an elite task force that police the ravaged streets of New York City following a devastating pandemic. It’s then up to The Division to find the root of the biological outbreak, all the while suppressing activist groups out to seize control of the Big Apple.
“Attaching Jake and Jessica is part of our development philosophy of working closely with top talent from the earliest stages to collaborate on a high quality film,” Matt Phelps, the vice president of Ubisoft Motion Pictures, said in a statement.
Aligning neatly with the release of the Underground expansion across PlayStation 4, news of The Division movie securing some top-tier Hollywood talent is certainly promising, particularly when you consider how well Assassin’s Creed is shaping up in time for its December release. The main priority for Ubisoft’s post-pandemic adaptation will now be to find a director to take point at the helm, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted when we hear more on that front.