Talk To Me breakout star Sophie Wilde is set to appear in Watch Dogs, a long-in-gestation adaptation of Ubisoft’s hacking-based videogame series.
As such Hollywood films as Blackhat and Hackers have taught us, only the coolest and most photogenic people engage in cybercrime. The cool-and-trendy-hacker theme was continued in Watch Dogs, a series of sandbox action adventure videogames first published by Ubisoft in 2014.
Spawning a hit franchise comprising two sequels and counting, Watch Dogs sees high-tech outlaws cause all kinds of digital mischief in cities around the world, with each game taking in stealth, driving, fisticuffs, shooting and tinkering with electronic devices.
A film adaptation based on the series was first floated by Ubisoft Motion Pictures back in 2013, before the original game was even released. The division’s plans for a multitude of movies based on its games took something of a body blow, however, when 2016’s Assassin’s Creed, in which Michael Fassbender went off on the hunt for Adam and Eve’s apple (no, really) failed to do as expected either critically or financially.
Since then, things have been rather quiet on the Watch Dogs front, but now Deadline reports that production company New Regency is still at work on the film. Attached is Sophie Wilde, the actor who broke through with a terrific lead performance in the indie horror Talk To Me, produced by A24.
Deadline’s report adds that Watch Dogs will be directed by French filmmaker Mathieu Turi, whose movies to date include 2017’s Hostile and 2023’s Black Faces. The earlier part of Turi’s career was taken up by assistant directing, and he has some impressive movies to his name in that capacity – Inglourious Basterds, Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter and Luc Besson’s Lucy are among the highlights.
Watch Dogs’ script is by Christie Le Blanc, who previously wrote the Netflix sci-fi thriller Oxygen, directed by Alexandre Aja.
There’s no word yet when Watch Dogs will start filming, though it at least sounds as though there’s some movement after a decade in gestation. The news of its casting comes as videogame-to-movie adaptations have enjoyed a real uptick in audience popularity in recent years, particularly with the smash-hit success of The Super Mario Bros Movie, which was such a winner that Nintendo has announced a sequel.
Nor is Watch Dogs the only game adaptation Mathieu Turi has in the works; he’s also working on a TV series based on the rat-infested A Plague Tale: Innocence. We’ll let you know more on these as we get it.
