The upcoming film adaptation of the 2016 video game Tom Clancy’s The Division has found its writer and director in Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan. Ubisoft Motion Pictures announced the hire today and confirmed that Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain will both star, with the former producing as well.
Ubisoft Motion Pictures CEO Gerard Guillemot expressed his excitement over the news, saying, “We are really excited to bring Stephen’s unique vision of the game to film audiences around the globe.”
On what appealed to Gaghan about the project, the director said, “The game has been an enormous success, in large part due to the visual landscape they created, their vision of a mid-apocalyptic Manhattan. It’s immersive, wonderfully strange, and yet familiar, filled with possibilities. It’s also remarkable to be able to collaborate with Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal early in the process. We all feel the story Ubisoft created is more relevant than ever.”
Gaghan’s best known for writing Traffic and directing Syriana, and his most recent directorial effort, which has been met with mixed reception from critics, Gold, is set for a wide release next week. Additionally, he’s no stranger to the world of video games, having written Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Ghosts, the tenth entry in the series.
Ubisoft is coming off of 2016’s largely unsuccessful Assassin’s Creed, which was critically panned and has only made around $186 million on its $125 million budget so far.
The Division is set in a futuristic version of New York City where a smallpox pandemic has decimated the city, forcing an agent of the Strategic Homeland Division to restart operations in Manhattan and investigate the outbreak.
Source: The Wrap
