The Ubisoft development train keeps on marching, and the studio has now gotten their third major franchise rolling. Another Tom Clancy franchise, Ghost Recon, is apparently being packaged as a pitch, though no talent is yet attached.
It’s interesting how the reason for the baffling lack of decent or even successful video game movies has slowly become more clear over the last few years, and it’s largely because movie studios and video game studios aren’t all that dissimilar. Both are in the business of exploiting popular IPs like intellectual strip-mines, and thus the two have found it difficult to play nice. With video games pulling in something like $70 billion a year themselves, neither side needs the other, so movement on major properties has been slow. Video game studios don’t want to let go of control or get fucked by Hollywood accounting, and though Hollywood certainly drools over the landscape of video game properties, they’re loathe to see their profits too evenly divided.
So with all of that background (elaborated with the most detail in the great Halo debacle), Ubisoft has taken it upon themselves to develop their own franchises, attach talent, seek money, and create complete packages before involving Hollywood studios too deeply. Last year we saw both Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell become actively developing projects with major talent attachments- Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy as leads respectively. Now Splinter Cell joins the roster, though without a star up front as of yet.
I’d expect Ubi to follow their own pattern and seek out a buzzing leading man here soon. It’s also about time some of these projects start making their studio partnerships and getting movies shot!
Source | LA Times (via Film Stage)