Just over a year since Michael Lesslie's first draft, two new writers have been brought in to tackle the stealthy free-running of Assassin's Creed. Adam Cooper and Bill Collage will be setting the latest scenes for producer and star Michael Fassbender.
The pair previously wrote the comedy Accepted and, er, the Olsen Twins vehicle New York Minute, as well as scoring the story credit for Tower Heist. But Assassin's Creed marks another high-profile gig in their in-the-works binder, slotting in alongside Darren Aronofsky's George Washington drama The General and the Ridley Scott / Christian Bale Moses epic Exodus. They're also adapting Gilbert King's Pulitzer Prize-winning Devil In The Grove for Lionsgate; crushing Jerry Bruckheimer's earthquake blockbuster Shake for Paramount; and delivering Transporter 4 for Luc Besson and EuropaCorp.
Last we heard, there was talk of Daniel Espinosa (Safe House, Child 44) in the director's chair, but there's no mention of him this morning so that would seem not to have panned out. It also remains to be seen how faithful an adaptation of the blockbuster Ubisoft gaming franchise we can expect, but if Cooper and Collage stick to canon we should see some variation of Fassbender being kdnapped by a secret organisation and forced to experience the memory of his assassin ancestors while on missions to locate mankind-controlling artefacts and run up walls.
Slower into production than anticipated, studio Fox hoped to get this started last summer. They'll need to get a move on if they're to meet the currently scheduled release date of August 6 next year.