ASSASSIN'S CREED And SPLINTER CELL Set For Late 2014? GHOST RECON Adaptation Confirmed
Jean-Julien Baronnet, chief executive of Ubisoft Motion Pictures, talks here about the plans for their video game adaptations and confirms that a Ghost Recon film is also being lined up. The budgets and possible release schedules for Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell are also teased.
"If you look at past adaptations of games to movies, none were done by an integrated gaming company that put a movie structure inside of itself," Jean-Julien Baronnet told The LA Times in a recent interview when asked about the hands-on role that Ubisoft are taking in the big screen adaptations of their biggest video game franchises. "We're not here to just license and we're not here to produce big movies ourselves. We are really in the middle of it." Part of this strategy included the unusual decision (when it comes to game companies anyway) to actually pay writers to develop the stories of their films and the hiring of A-List actors like Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy before even getting a studio involved.
As well as being creatively involved, the site mentions that, "Ubisoft also has the right to co-finance any movie with New Regency, meaning it could invest in a second film in either series after forgoing the first. Other studios balked at that demand, since sequels are typically safer investments than originals." They're clearly taking these adaptations VERY seriously!
New Regency Chief Executive Brad Weston actually revealed that while the scripts are currently being written, they're already on the hunt for directors for both Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell. He believes that they will cost no more than $100 million each and be released "no earlier than late 2014". Baronnet also confirms that a pitch is being put together for a Ghost Recon movie. "We don't want to make an average movie," he added. "We want to make a movie that will serve the brand and make happy the gamers and also the non-gamers. I think it has never been done before, but we can build this bridge."