May 12--Fans of the "Assassin's Creed" video game series got a look Wednesday at the first trailer for 20th Century Fox's upcoming film adaptation starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
Fassbender ("X-Men: Apocalypse") plays Callum Lynch, a violent man who finds himself recruited by a corporation and dispatched through ancestral memory as a highly trained killing machine.
It's complicated.
The film is the latest iteration of the "Assassin's Creed" mythos, which has sold over 80 million copies of its games, as well as several spinoff comics and novels.
Joining Fassbender in the cast of the $150-million adaptation are Academy Award winners Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose") and Jeremy Irons ("Reversal of Fortune") as Justin Kurzel, who worked with both Fassbender and Cotillard in his 2015 "Macbeth."
While it's clear a large portion of that budget is dedicated to the special effects required to render a live-action version of a video game, it's unclear whether those moments will translate to anything approaching emotional resonance.
That said, there's plenty of shirtless Fassbender included, so it can't be all bad.
