Ubisoft Motion Pictures, the film division of the French game publisher, has plans to adapt Watch Dogs, Far Cry and the Rayman spinoff Rabbids into major motion pictures, Variety reported this week.
This trio of films is hardly Ubisoft's first foray into Hollywood. Last year it announced Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell movies set up at Twentieth Century Fox, with Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy attached to star, and it also recently announced a Michael Bay adaptation of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon at Warner Bros.
All three stories seem naturally suited for the silver screen: Watch Dogs, slated for release this November, centers on the idea of massively networked systems that can be hacked to obtain information or control city infrastructure in the name of vigilante justice. Far Cry has varied in plot from game to game, but the recent Far Cry 3 was one of the best selling games of games of 2012, moving more than 6 million units for Ubisoft.
Finally, Rabbids, the hyperactive hyper-mischievous rabbits spin-off from the Rayman games, are a well-established franchise aimed at a young demographic. The plan is to produce the film as a mixture of live-action and CGI, similar to the film version of The Smurfs.
Ubisoft Motion Pictures CEO Jean-Julien Baronnet says that the films will not be simple adaptations of existing storylines, but rather entirely new stories developed in conjunction with Ubisoft's various game studios to ensure fidelity to the source material. To do this, Ubisoft will finance the projects and maintain creative control, with cast and crew all chosen by UMP under Baronnet's direction.
Ubisoft also ventured into Hollywood with 2010's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Despite relatively poor critical reception, it fared well at the box office, netting roughly $135 million more than its estimated $200 million budget. Considering that, Ubisoft likely has another handful of hits on the way — just so long as it keeps Far Cry far, far away from Uwe Boll.
