According to Variety, Jake Gyllenhaal has signed on to star in and produce an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s The Division, a video game released by Ubisoft earlier this year. There’s no word on who will write or direct, but Ubisoft is apparently looking for another recognizable actor to join up before it officially starts shopping the project around to movie studios. Assuming it does get picked up, The Division will join the Assassin’s Creed movie, the Splinter Cell movie, and the Rabbids movie as part of Ubisoft’s plan to gradually take over all of Hollywood with video game adaptations.
The Division video game is set in Manhattan shortly after a weaponized virus wiped out most of the city’s inhabitants (it’s very cheery). You play as a member of a covert military organization that is tasked with restoring order to the city by killing every looter, gang member, and rioter you come across. If the movie is anything like how the game plays, though, it will involve Gyllenhaal killing the same bad guys over and over again so he can get slightly better weapons, hats, and scarves, and while the setting will be fascinating and terrifying at first, the thrill of seeing Times Square under siege from bad guys will eventually fade away. After that, Gyllenhaal will realize that killing the same bad guys is kind of hollow, so he’ll venture into the player-versus-player area and instantly get murdered by some guy who wanted to steal those hats he worked so hard to get.
Also, because nobody can escape their past—even if they have a magic dagger that allows them to travel through time—we feel the need to point out that this will be the second time Gyllenhaal has starred in an adaptation of an Ubisoft video game. The first time, of course, was the poorly received Prince Of Persia, which Gyllenhaal has worked rather hard to make everyone forget about. Nightcrawler was pretty good, but the internet never forgets about bad video game movies.