Another day, another not-good Ubisoft headline as the company is having one of the worst years anyone can remember. This time around, we’re just moving into somewhat bizarre territory with the line item that Ubisoft has cancelled a Splinter Cell movie that was in development. In development since…2012. Seriously.
The Direct reports producer Basil Iwanyk saying, “That movie would have been awesome… Just couldn’t get it right, script-wise, budget-wise.”
It is not clear whether this was just cancelled, or it was cancelled a long time ago and Ubisoft simply never said anything about it. Either way, this movie was in fact announced in 2012 with Tom Hardy supposedly on board as Sam Fisher.
While Splinter Cell is dead, there remains a long list of in-the-works Ubisoft multimedia projects, where almost all remain in total mystery status:
- A The Division movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain for Netflix
- A Beyond Good and Evil movie for Netflix
- AJust Dance movie for (unknown)
- A Watch Dogs movie starring Tom Blythe which is actually being filmed after previously being in development for 10 years
- An Assassin’s Creed live action and animated series for Netflix
- A Far Cry animated series for Netflix
- A Splinter Cell animated series for Netflix
Again, only one of these seems to be making any meaningful progress toward becoming a reality, with many of these others languishing for years since their announcement, clearly a large chunk due to deals with Netflix, which has done many live action and animated adaptations for other games. Ubisoft did in fact get out Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon remix on Netflix in 2023, but the overall list is…bleak. Its two biggest projects were the Michael Fassbender Assassin’s Creed movie in 2016 and the Prince of Persia movie with Jake Gyllenhaal in 2010, both flops. Granted yes, many projects take years to come together, but Ubisoft has been moving slower than most on this front.
I am extremely curious how it came to be that of all projects, Watch Dogs, a game series where it’s not even clear it’s still alive, managed to get its movie adaptation in motion before many of these others. I was most interested in the Division movie which had actual big-name stars attached but we simply have not had any updates since around 2020, and it’s unknown what the status of that is at this point. It does not seem promising.
As for Splinter Cell? Can’t say that’s shocking either. Perhaps that can be restarted someday, but it feels like Ubisoft currently has much bigger problems than movie and TV show adaptations as its game business flounders.
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