As if there weren’t enough reasons to love Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, X-Men: First Class, Prometheus, Shame, Hunger, Centurion, Fish Tank… the list goes on and on), here’s one more: he’s going to be both behind the scenes and starring in the upcoming Assassin’s Creed film.
Long rumored to be in production, the Ubisoft franchise will now be produced by Fassbender’s new production company DMC Film, which he owns with Conor McCaughan, as reported by Variety. Not only that, but Fassbender will don the assassin’s hood and star in it himself, which is probably the best news ever — and given his previous roles in 300 and Centurion, this won’t be a stretch to see him perform.
For those unaware, Assassin’s Creed is the story of Desmond Miles, a young man in the present day brought in as a test subject for the company Abstergo, who are testing out a system called the Animus which allows the user to access ancestral memories. As we learn, Desmond has a history with a group known as the Assassins who are in conflict with the Knight’s Templar, for which Abstergo is a front for, and all of it leads to a Doomsday prophecy in 2012 in a historical odyssey that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. It’s an incredible mystery and a fantastic game, and hopefully with Fassbender attached it won’t be like — well, like every other videogame adaptation to date. (The wound from Max Payne still hurts.)
There actually have been films set in the Assassin’s Creed universe before now, such as Ascendance and Embers, two short films, and Lineage, a 36-minute film that acts as a prequel to the second game in the series, but this film claims to be an adaptation of the game as opposed to a new story within the universe. How close the movie will tie into the game franchise is unknown at this time, nor is it known if they’ll still include both the present and past timelines or strictly set the film in the past, but hey, with Fassbender behind the helm we’re willing to trust the entire production without question.
The third (read: fifth) game in the series will see release later this year, as well as a new graphic novel from Kerschl and Stewart.
