Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Chastain to star in “Gold” director’s “The Division”

PanARMENIAN.Net - “Gold” director Stephen Gaghan is attaching himself to write and direct Ubisoft’s adaptation of its popular video game “The Division” starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain, Variety said.

Ubisoft Motion Pictures will develop with Gyllenhaal’s and Riva Marker’s (“Beasts of No Nation”) Nine Stories and Chastain’s Freckle Films.

Developed and published by Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment with assistance from Red Storm Entertainment, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, the third-person shooter is set in a dystopian New York City in the aftermath of a smallpox pandemic. The player, who is an agent of the Strategic Homeland Division, commonly referred to as simply “The Division,” is tasked with helping to rebuild the Division’s operations in Manhattan, investigating the nature of the outbreak and combating criminal activity in its wake.

Ubisoft will package the project shopping it to studios. It currently has “Splinter Cell,” starring Tom Hardy, at New Regency and Fox.

“I’m excited to work with Ubisoft Motion Pictures and collaborate with their team at Massive Entertainment to bring ‘The Division’ to the big screen. They’re great guys, exceptionally creative, and willing to take risks,” Gaghan said. “The game has been an enormous success, in large part due to the visual landscape they created, their vision of a mid-apocalyptic Manhattan. It’s immersive, wonderfully strange, and yet familiar, filled with possibilities. It’s also remarkable to be able to collaborate with Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal early in the process. We all feel the story Ubisoft created is more relevant than ever.”

Though he isn’t known for action-heavy tentpoles, the game does touch on global issues that would allow Gaghan to jump from that commentary to the intense setpieces that the game is known for.