After a rather cold reception for the
Assassin's Creed movie, Ubisoft Motion Pictures is attempting to warm things up a bit, by sending us on a trip to frozen, post-apocalyptic New York. We already knew that
Jake Gyllenhaal (
Nightcrawler, Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time) and
Jessica Chastain (
Zero Dark Thirty, Miss Sloane) were attached to the project as stars and producers, and now we finally know who's going to sit in the director's chair :
Stephen Gaghan.
Gaghan won an Oscar® for
Traffic (best adapted screenplay) and received a nomination for
Syriana. It won't be his first contact with the world of video-games either, as he wrote the script for
Call Of Duty: Ghost. "
We are really excited to bring Stephen's unique vision of the game to film audiences around the globe," the CEO of Ubisoft's movie division said in a statement.
The Division's director will also work on his own screenplay; “
I’m excited to work with Ubisoft Motion Pictures and collaborate with their team at Massive Entertainment to bring ‘The Division’ to the big screen. They’re great guys, exceptionally creative, and willing to take risks. The game has been an enormous success, in large part due to the visual landscape they created, their vision of a mid-apocalyptic Manhattan" - Gaghan said. The director also has a message for people that haven't had an opportunity to play the game -
"It’s immersive, wonderfully strange, and yet familiar, filled with possibilities. It’s also remarkable to be able to collaborate with Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal early in the process. We all feel the story Ubisoft created is more relevant than ever.”
The upcoming video-game adaptation doesn't have a relese date yet, but are you excited about
The Division's director? Be sure to leave your thoughts below!
On Black Friday, a smallpox pandemic, transmitted by a virus planted on banknotes, sweeps through New York City. The disease, known as "Green Poison" or "The Dollar Flu", causes widespread chaos, and Manhattan is placed under quarantine. The U.S. Government activates sleeper agents in the population who operate for the Strategic Homeland Division, or simply "The Division", to assist emergency responders, now called the Joint Task Force (JTF), in restoring order.