The past couple of months have brought speculation and a lot of talk among the fans of one of the most popular video game titles in the world, Assassin’s Creed, about the
upcoming movie adaptation of the Ubisoft game. This speculation was confirmed in October 2011, when NYMag published that Assassin’s Creed will indeed be turned into a movie produced by Sony Pictures. While turning a video game into a movie is not a rare occasion, the Assassin’s Creed deal has surprised plenty of insiders in both the film and the video game industry.
A lot of buzz has been generated by the rumors of the Assassin’s Creed movie, but most of them are centered around the control Sony Pictures has allowed Ubisoft over the whole deal. Sony has essentially relinquished a huge amount of control to the game publisher—allowing Ubisoft to approve the major aspects of the movie, including the budget, the main cast of characters, the script, and international release date. Needless to say, this kind of control has never been seen before in the history of video game to movie adaptations.
Of course, Hollywood insiders are very skeptical about this deal, and have essentially condemned the Ubisoft and Sony Picturesdeal to the back burner, and one talent agent went as far as to say that the Assassin’s Creed movie will never be made. One of the factors that might have led this talent agent to come up with this pessimistic conclusion is the fact that the Disney production of Prince of Persia tanked. Another industry fact is that even the most popular directors working in the movies today—Steven Spielberg—never gets this kind of control over the films he is directing.
Ubisoft certainly hopes that control over the Assassin’s Creed adaptation will allow them to improve on the mistakes of the Prince of Persia adaptation, but what does a video game company know about the film industry?
Comments
Why did you write this article? We've known about all this for months and you haven't brought anything new to the table. You're just rekindling old news. Why?
You have made a fair comment. GPT was acquired by an Australian based media company in late November so a few news articles did not get posted until the change over occurred.
When the staff came back from Christmas the consensus was to release this article as it did not get a lot of airplay, and when we look at the hits on the article – it appears to have been a good decision. It is still news to many. We also felt that tracking motion picture tie ups is important considering the number of similar deals currently being negotiated.
Many of us enjoy the Assassins creed lineage to date, and feel the quality has been good with each instalment. Having said that, we are not convinced that Hollywood brings any benefit to gaming – quite the contrary. More on this subject will shortly follow.
I understand, I was just a little disappointed to see a new Assassin's Creed Film article devoid of any new information. But that's a fair explanation.
I agree that Ubisoft have a very high level of quality and considering it was only a build up for a video came, I was very impressed by Lineage. I'll reserve my judgement for a Hollywood/AC mash until I've seen it.
Very shortly I hope.
Thank you
All the movies made about games so far have sucked. I dont think movie makers understand games so they really mess things up, and sadly the business people calling the shots know even less.
I agree with you Bob, Hollywood has had three strikes, now let the Game Publishers step up and drive for once. It's their baby afterall
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