For a while there, Ubisoft kept pumping Assassin’s Creed games out like they were going out of style. The French game publisher cranked them out once a year, effects on quality or franchise fatigue be damned. A new interview with the star of the Assassin’s Creed movie make it sound like Hollywood’s ready to mimic that same golden goose paradigm.
Talking with CinemaBlend, Michael Fassbender says that the filmmakers involved with the adaptation already have sequels in mind:
This is the sort of origin of his story. We have an idea of where he’s going to go over the next two films. We kind of did a three-film arc. We’ll wait and see how people respond to this, but for sure, we have an idea of where he’s going to go next.
That quote in and of itself isn’t that surprising. Movie studios — like their counterparts in just about any other mass-market medium — are always all too ready to make sequels and extensions of things that make money. But, given how so many hoped-for franchises wind up sputtering out after one instalment, it’s not exactly the wisest thing to say until the returns come in. Assassin’s Creed may very buck that fate when it comes out next week, but only if it makes enough money for Fox to greenlight more.
As an oddly coincidental sidenote, 2016 is the first year in a long time to not have a new Assassin’s Creed video game out for consoles/PC in time for the holidays.