If you do much gaming at all these days, you've probably played one of the Assassin's Creed games. Launched back in 2007, Ubisoft's time-hopping series has become a blockbuster hit franchise, buoyed by an addictive mix of crazy sci-fi conspiracy theories, gorgeously recreated historical cityscapes, and stabbing people in the face. The surprise hit has since spawned multiple sequels (Assassin's Creed: Revelations comes out next month) and spin-offs, with the first three games having sold over 28 million copies worldwide. Now the inevitable has happened: Variety reports that Sony is in negotiations to adapt and distribute a movie based on Assassin's Creed.
The Assassin's Creed games are the story of Desmond Miles, an average guy who is kidnapped by the sinister Abstergo Industries and strapped into a device that allows him to project his mind back in time along his bloodline -- he can relive the memories of any of his ancestors. So far he's lived the lives of both Altair, an assassin in the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades, and Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young nobleman who discovers his legacy during a quest to avenge his murdered family across 1470s Italy. With each new adventure, Desmond unravels a global secret history involving unrecorded prehistory and a centuries-long war between the Assassins and the Templars.
Ubisoft has built up an elaborate and fascinating mythology underneath their Assassin's Creed franchise, so there's plenty of potential for a series of films. It's like the History Channel had sex with Art Bell, then somebody gave their baby a set of retractable, poison-tipped wrist-blades. The trick will be finding a screenwriter who can distill the tangled web of conspiracy, history, and mythology down to something that can be fit into a digestible two-hour chunk. It's a lot easier to take in all the AC craziness when it's spread out over the course of a 20-hour game and interspersed with insane action gameplay and free-running across the rooftops of a meticulously recreated Renaissance Venice.
We still haven't seen a truly successful videogame-to-movie adaptation, but there are several in the pipeline that have great potential. Bioshock, Mass Effect, Uncharted, and now Assassin's Creed...I've got my fingers crossed that Hollywood gets at least some of them right. But hey, if not, I'll just pop them back in my console and experience them all again.
For more information on the Assassin's Creed games, check out Gaming Blend.
