Lately there’s been a lot of reports in the news about how Ubisoft is trying to buck the trend of less-than-stellar video game movies.
As we’ve previously discussed, the company is developing films based on their games in-house themselves, then shopping them around to various studios when they have a strong package put together.
Ubisoft currently has three big screen game adaptations in the works: Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell. Tom Hardy is attached to star in Splinter Cell, and Assassin’s Creed has Michael Fassbinder onboard to headline. Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed are both set up at New Regency, and reports have hit the net that Creed now has a screenwriter as well, a playwright named Michael Lesslie.
Lesslie is a newcomer, and according to the Hollywood Reporter his credits include Prince of Denmark, which played at the National Theater last year, in addition to writing several short films as well. This is definitely an interesting choice for a game adaptation, where you could potentially hire a number of established, A-List scribes who get paid millions for their scripts. To hand this property over to a newcomer, and a British playwright as well, is a pretty bold move.
There’s not much else known about Lesslie at the moment, but there’s a few tidbits on his imdb page. Lesslie is in his late twenties, he went to Harrow School, and he graduated from Exeter College, Oxford University. Again, not the typical writer to adapt a video game at all, and maybe a scribe with this kind of pedigree can really bring some class and taste to the proceedings.
It’s also interesting to point out that with so many prequels these days, Lesslie’s acclaimed play Prince of Denmark is his backstory for Hamlet. Denmark has gotten high marks from critics and theatergoers alike, and again, Lesslie is a very interesting left of center choice that could create some intriguing results.
Assassin’s Creed is certainly not on the same level of making a movie version of say, Pong, and we’re very excited to see where the development of Creed will lead from here.
