After what feels like a decade of foreplay, Hollywood is gearing up to mount the video game world and get moving hardcore. The trickle so far has given us nothing but mediocrity and outright crap, but sheer number suggest we’ll be getting some decent video game movies in the next few years. The latest contender? Splinter Cell.
The successful Tom Clancy-adapting franchise is about to be seven games deep, and Ubisoft has been doing the no-pants dance with both Paramount and the Brothers Warner for a deal to bring the stealth ops action universe to the big screen. Collider has the scoop that Ubisoft themselves have hired a screenwriter, Eric Singer, to pen the adaptation, even though there’s no sign of one studio or another having won the deal. Singer has only so far written Tom Tykwer’s The International, though he has a script lined up with David O. Russell that has attracted Chistian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and Amy Adams- not too shabby.
Depending on the hired director, Splinter Cell seems like a straightforward enough property to exploit- cool gadgets, stealthy operations, lots of gunplay, someone like Statham or Dwayne Johnson creeping around and flipping down that green-glowing viewfinder in an announcement teaser… done.