Nightcrawler and Southpaw star Jake Gyllenhaal is ready for another crack at the video game movie genre, this time swapping swords and sandals for post-pandemic New York in Ubisoft’s live-action rendition of The Division.
Variety has the scoop, revealing the actor – who had a foray into the field with the middling Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time six years ago – has now inked a deal to produce and star in the motion picture, itself based on the lucrative video game that first launched back in March.
Since then, The Division has gone on to become Ubisoft’s fastest-selling product, pulling in an impressive $330 million within the space of five days on the market. It’s also being nurtured as something of a franchise-starter at the mega-publisher and now, a big-screen adaptation will join the growing roster of video game movies at Ubisoft Motion Pictures, which is already presiding over Splinter Cell and this year’s Assassin’s Creed – the latter of which places Michael Fassbender in the title role as Aguilar/Callum Lynch.
Sources close to Variety claim that, with Jake Gyllenhaal closing in on the lead role, the studio is now on the lookout for a writer to pen a screenplay based on the open-world RPG, which is rooted in a warped future where New York City has been brought to its knees by a devastating pandemic. In the fallout, a group of agents known as The Division rise up against the outlaws and chaos.
No word yet on a director to helm Ubisoft’s latest video game movie, but with a star of Gyllenhaal’s calibre now attached, we expect The Division to start picking up steam very soon. Assassin’s Creed, meanwhile, is expected to swoop into theaters on December 21.
