It's a big morning for videogame movie news. Along with the announcement of a writer for the new Tomb Raider film, we've also got games studio Ubisoft revealing that big screen adaptations are in the works for Far Cry, Watch Dogs and the **Rabbids. This follows hot on the heels of the story from earlier this week that Michael Bay will be overseeing a cinema version of Tom Clancy and Ubisoft's **Ghost Recon. Assassin's Creed (with Michael Fassbender) and Splinter Cell (with Tom Hardy) have also both been in the works for some time. Danger of photosensitive epilepsy, Will Robinson.
For those unacquainted, Far Cry is a series of first-person shooters, with each instalment taking its own narrative route. The first was about a special forces agent on the trail of a missing journalist; the second was about hunting terrorist The Jackal; and the third was about an American tourist forced into jungle survival mode to save his friends from pirates. There are also various iterations and expansions in between the tentpole games.
Watch Dogs, on the other hand, is a new steath-based game that isn't even out yet, while the **Rabbids **(Lapins Cretins in their native France) started out as antagonists in the Rayman series, before taking on a chaotic life of their own, screaming DAAAAAGH! as they did so.
Film-wise there's little indication yet of how these Ubisoft properties will shape up, although we can certainly expect Far Cry to be a rather different prospect than Uwe Boll's 2008 version seem a few degrees removed from the Despicable Me minions who have kind of stolen their thunder.
The films will all, however, be their own beasts, and will not use any existing templates. "These are not adaptations," insists Ubisoft's Jean-Julien Baronnet. "We will create a brand new story, always. The next stage for each project is script-development, which Ubisoft will fund before tendering their wares to studios. That strategy means "no one can tell us we have to do the movie a certain way," says Baronnet.
Watch this space for updates. Watch Dogs (the game) will be out for all the usual platforms in November.