The Animus is, without question, the crown jewel of Abstergo Industries. Developed as a lavish virtual reality machine, its ability to read, interpret and ultimately project a person’s genetic memory onto a 3D space has served as the backbone of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise from the get-go, allowing the mega-publisher to chop and change between various historical eras through the years.
Now, thanks to a collaboration between Ubisoft Motion Pictures, New Regency and 20th Century Fox, we’re within touching distance of seeing that technology light up the big screen. The subject? Michael Fassbender’s Callum Lynch, a known criminal sentenced to death towards the beginning of the Assassin’s Creed movie.
However, it’s only when Abstergo Industries – and, by effect, the nefarious Templars – learn of his Assassin ancestry that Callum becomes an exploitable asset, one who is thrust into the Animus against his will to relive the Spanish Inquisition as Aguilar, his long-forgotten ancestor. Check out the film’s first clip up above for a look at that painstaking process in motion.
Touting a morally complex story, Assassin’s Creed is certainly chock full of potential – from director Justin Kurzel (Macbeth) down to the ensemble cast, on paper at least next month’s live-action adaptation appears to have all the necessary ingredients for a compelling yarn. One potential hiccup is whether Kurzel and Co. can engineer a cohesive story based on a such a mind-bending premise, but if they do, the director’s hopes for an AC sequel may well be vindicated after all.
Assassin’s Creed, also starring Marion Cotillard, Ariane Labed, Charlotte Rampling, Matias Varela, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and Michael K. Williams, has been pegged for December 21.
