20th Century Fox and New Regency’s upcoming Assassin’s Creed movie has scored a new star today as Deadline reports that Ariane Labed (Before Midnight) has signed on to star opposite the previously-attached Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Justin Kurrzel (Macbeth) will direct the December 21, 2016 release.
From Ubisoft, the original Assassin’s Creed game involves Desmond Miles, captured by a secret organization with ties to the Knight Templar, who repeatedly send Miles back in time into the body of his assassin ancestors to retrieve valuable historical artifacts.
Ubisoft Motion Pictures, the film division of the company, has been developing the games into a feature for 20th Century Fox for some time. In a recent interview, Fassbender told ComingSoon.net that production is gearing up to begin this September.
“It’s all new to me,” said the star, “but starting to develop scripts and work on them, they take time. It just takes time to get a good story together and we really want to do it right… That’s always the challenge of something that’s so dense, to really find something and pare it down and, basically, there are so many elements to it. Trying to translate that to an audience, you have to pick key things. [P]art of it is getting through the density of it and paring down and engaging a simple story.”
Labed’s character has not been yet revealed, although it is noted that she will play the same role that Ex Machina‘s Alicia Vikander was recently said to be in talks for.
