Given how badly things went for UbiSoft last month with Assassin's Creed, saying that their next attempted adaptation, Splinter Cell, won't be like a video game movie is probably the right way to go. Once again they've got a big star attached, this time Tom Hardy who has been on board for quite a while without anything actually moving forward. But producer Basil Iwanyk does have some information on it which he relayed to Collider, and it sounds like they want the focus to be on Hardy and not the game franchise...
"The challenge of making ‘Splinter Cell’ interesting was we didn’t have this IP with a very specific backstory. That allowed us to make up our own world and really augment and fill out the characters. I don’t think one applies to the other because I don’t think our movie will feel like a movie that came out of a video game, I think it’ll feel like a badass, Tom Hardy action movie, which is what we wanted."
Yeah, that could work in luring in people who have no interest in author Tom Clancy or the popular Sam Fisher character, but could it alienate others who have been fans since the first game in 2002? The producer goes on to note that a script is ready and waiting for Hardy's approval, but the plan is to try and avoid the same territory as the Bond and Bourne movies. Sadly, he also has an idea about the movie's MPAA rating that fans may not care for...
"We’re definitely going to make it a hard PG-13. No, it’s not going to be like [John] Wick,’ but it’s going to be badass. The good and the bad news is that, obviously, the Bond movies have had a resurgence and the Jason Bourne movies are the Jason Bourne movies, so we’re trying to stay away from those movies in terms of tone, in terms of bad guys, in terms of settings. What’s a world that we haven’t seen yet? What’s an area of the world and a conflict that we haven’t really touched upon in movies in a long time, to make it feel fresh?"
Thoughts? Are you excited to see Tom Hardy in a Splinter Cell movie?
