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Michael Fassbender joins Assassin's Creed: A Pretty Good Start.
Other | Monday 9th July 2012 | Osh
Fassassin's Creed.
Remember Prince of Persia? If you don't, you're not missing much, and if you do, you probably wish you don't. Which is a slightly convuluted way of saying that Disney's action / epic released a few years ago wasn't the end product game developers UbiSoft imagined, or what audiences wanted. So their next project, a film adaptation of the immensely popular Assassin's Creed video games, is starting development with great care - by giving it over to an indie studio, and recruiting the acting and producing talents of Michael Fassbender.
And good on UbiSoft; instead of giving it to Sony, who were in talks to shoot it, it's looking like they'll take it elsewhere to make it independently. This is a big risk, and one that they should have taken with Prince of Persia - this way, the eventual movie is going to get some much-needed urgency to it. And to follow this up, the most exciting announcement is the involvement of one Michael Fassbender, current actor extraordinaire, to star in and also produce the picture. It looks like he'll be playing Desmond, the modern-day 'main' character of the game who journey's into an ancestor's psyche in order to reveal secrets about an ominous organisation, The Knights Templar. Fassbender doesn't look quite, well, tanned enough to fill Desmond, Altair and Ezio's shoes - but that's nothing a few hours in a sunbed can't fix. That, and he's also one hell of an actor as shown in his roles in Prometheus, X-Men: First Class, Shame, and Hunger.
The planets seem to be lining up in favour of this adaptation; UbiSoft may end up going back to Sony to co-finance the venture, but if the creative reigns are given to someone who knows how to successfully bring the fantastic games to the big screen, then we may be in for a real treat. Fingers crossed that the next announcement is who'll be directing.
- Gary Green (@FilmOnTrial)
