By Russ Fischer/Oct. 22, 2012 10:00 am EST
Ubisoft scored a big win when it attached Michael Fassbender to produce and star in Assassin’s Creed. And now it has financial backers to make the film a reaity: New Regency, which is financing Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, and Fox.
The idea is to have the film fully set up to shoot by next summer. But getting to that point means they need a script, and a director, among other things. With the combination of Fassbender and the backing, a director shouldn’t be difficult to find. Getting a good script that keeps the tone of the games but translates the action into something that audiences will like will be more difficult.
The primary games follow a man named Desmond Miles, who relives “ancestral memories” through technology, which throws the narrative of the first and second games back to the Crusades and Renaissance periods, respectively. (An upcoming third game, hitting next week, is set during the American Revolution.) Until we hear otherwise, I’d expect Fassbender to play both Desmond and whichever ancestor is the real focus of the film. The games feature a larger story, in which Desmond, in between reliving his ancestral memories, slowly uncovers secrets involving the modern version of the Knights Templar, an end of the world prophecy, and a pre-human civilization.
