Assassin's Creed Movie Aims to "Feel Legit," Boss Says

Video game movies have a track record of mediocrity or worse. Ubisoft believes this year's Assassin's Creed will buck the trend. And now, Ubisoft's head of content for Assassin's Creed, Azaizia Aymar, has spoken up to discuss how the movie aims to achieve this.

"What we're trying to do is make sure the [Assassin's Creed] DNA is respected," Aymar said in an interview with the Ubisoft blog. "On top of all of that, we're making sure we're able to move forward on new inspirations and ideas.

"We want everything to feel legit. As you saw with the trailer, we think that part of the job has been done in a really nice way at the moment."

Aymar also talked about how Assassin's Creed aims to appeal to a wider audience than just fans of the game series alone. He said every Assassin's Creed transmedia project needs to be "completely independent and self-sufficient," including the movie.

"The idea was if someone knows the franchise, we want them to see all the references and all the characters they love, but a newcomer should be able to get into the experience without feeling overwhelmed by all the information," he explained. "What we've been trying to do for years is avoid too many self-references. We kind of did the exact same thing with the movie. It has a nice balance of getting a really strong story with a new perspective."

You can read the full interview here.

Assassin's Creed, which stars Oscar-nominee Michael Fassbender in the two lead roles and Oscar-winners Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons, opens on December 21; that is one week after Star Wars spinoff Rogue One comes out.

Recently, an Ubisoft executive said the company is not expecting to make a lot of money from Assassin's Creed. "It is a lot more a marketing thing. It's also good for the image of the brand," European boss Alain Corre said.

"We have our core fans, but what we would like is to put this franchise in front of a lot more people who, maybe, will then pick up future Assassin's Creed games," he added.

Breaking from tradition, Ubisoft will not release a new mainline Assassin's Creed game this year. This is good for the movie, Ubisoft said previously, because it gives the film's marketing team more time and opportunity to focus on hyping it.

The next game in the Assassin's Creed series, which is rumored to launch in 2017, is believed to be set in Egypt.