Ubisoft has announced that filming for the movie adaptation of its Watch Dog series has officially begun. The video game developer/publisher announced the post on social media.
"Lights_Camera_Action.exe," the developer posted, referencing the franchise's focus on hacking. Unfortunately, not much else can be discerned from the post, although we did learn some official details last month when Ubisoft confirmed that production on the movie adaptation would begin this summer.
The adaptation, in production at New Regency, will feature an original story set in the Watch Dogs universe. Tom Blyth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and Sophie Wilde (Talk to Me) are set to star in the film, though their characters are still being kept under wraps. Seeing as how it's an original story, it's unclear if they'll be playing characters seen in the video games.
French filmmaker Mathieu Turi (The Deep Dark) is set to direct with an original screenplay written by Christie LeBlanc and revised by Victoria Beta. Leblanc is best known for writing the screenplay for Netflix's Oxygen, a sci-fi thriller based on the 2016 Black List script O2. New Regency's Yariv Milchan and Natalie Lehmann are producing alongside Ubisoft Film & Television's Margaret Boykin.
There have been three Watch Dogs games released to date: Watch Dogs (2014), Watch Dogs 2 (2016), and Watch Dogs: Legion (2020). The games are typically set in fictionalized versions of real-life cities and feature stories that largely revolve around hacker protagonists caught up in the criminal underworld, taking on corrupt companies, crime bosses, and rival hackers.
"Each game features different stories in a world where hacker rebels attempt to fight injustices enabled by CTOS, a digital information system that links entire cities onto a single network," Ubisoft described of the franchise. "From Aiden Pearce in Chicago to Marcus Holloway in San Francisco to citizens in a dystopic London, members of the DedSec hacker organization use their advanced hacking apps and gadgets to undermine CTOS' oppressive reign and uncover corruption behind the system."
2014's Watch Dogs kicked off the franchise in a fictionalized version of Chicago with a story following hacker/vigilante Aiden Pearce's quest for revenge after the killing of his niece. 2016's Watch Dogs 2 took us to a city inspired by San Francisco and followed a hacker by the name of Marcus Holloway who worked with the underground hacking group DedSec to take down the city's advanced surveillance system.
The most recent game in the series was 2020's Watch Dogs: Legion, which took us overseas to a futuristic, dystopian London. The story follows the hacker syndicate DedSec as they attempt to clear their names after being framed for a series of terrorist bombings. Unlike the first two games, Legion allowed you to play as anyone found in the city and recruit them to join your team.
The Watch Dogs games have typically been met with positive reviews and are one of Ubisoft's most financially success video game series. Let's hope a movie adaptation does the games justice.