When hiring someone to write an Assassin’s Creed movie, it’s important to determine that they have the chops to cover modern science-fiction and historical action in equal measure—which you already know if you’re familiar with the video game series. If not, ignore that thing we just said.
As reported by Deadline, New Regency and video game publisher Ubisoft have hired Adam Cooper and Bill Collage to write the studios’ big-screen version of Assassin’s Creed. The video game series has always played a bit loose with whatever time period it’s set in, so these writers are a particularly appropriate choice, given that they’ve worked on Darren Aronofsky’s George Washington film, The General, and Exodus: Gods And Kings, Ridley Scott’s adaptation of the Moses story starring Christian Bale and Aaron Paul. Cooper and Collage also wrote the story for 2011’s Tower Heist and the Olsen twin-vehicle New York Minute, so they have some experience writing films set in the present-day as well—something that would be relevant if Assassin’s Creed secretly takes place in a contemporary time period, with all of the historical stuff just a computer simulation.
We don’t know yet which computer-simulated historical setting the Assassin’s Creed movie will take place in, or whether it will be an adaptation of one of the games in the franchise, specifically, or a wholly original story. However, we do know that it will star Michael Fassbender, as a guy who lives in the present day and uses a computer simulation to go back in time and stab historical figures in the neck. Again, if you didn’t already know that, just ignore that part.