Ubisoft Fancy Splinter Cell/Assassin's Creed Movies
During a conference at GDC an Ubisoft company man has revealed that the company is seeking for two of their more popular franchises to get the silver screen treatment. The company has had limited success with movie versions of their games as the Far Cry movie was released to universal dislike. They do, however, have Prince of Persia in the pipe-line with the backing of Disney.
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As an example of how films and games should be developed, Mallat held up Avatar. In 2007, Ubisoft announced it was developing the game adaptation for the forthcoming $200-million-plus 3D sci-fi epic from Titantic director James Cameron, due out later this year. Mallat said Cameron's LightStorm Entertainment is working closely with Ubisoft, even sharing assets with the digital effects arm at Weta Digital (Lord of the Rings), which is handling special effects.
"When we met, we understood we were on the same page with Avatar," said Mallat of his first encounter with the Aliens and Terminator director. "He wrote the script to Avatar around 12, 14 years ago, but he had to wait for the technology." Via taped comments at GDC 2005, Cameron revealed that he was developing the Avatar game and film simultaneously, telling BusinessWeek the following year that it would be a massively multiplayer game. Since then, little has been heard about the film's genre or story.
As for Hybride, Mallat said the VFX house was "working on several projects" and the public "wouldn't have to wait that long" to find out what they are. However, the executive said the "long-term goal is to have movie and game people [at Ubisoft] talk to each other in real time. That's happening already...and those filmmaking tools and processes will help us make better games." Mallat then mentioned Tom Clancy and Assassin's Creed as game IPs Ubisoft is looking at as potential first film projects.
