Production on a live-action Watch Dogs film has finally started over a decade after Ubisoft first announced the adaptation was in the works.
The first Watch Dogs game was released in 2014. It was an open-world action game starring Aiden Pierce, a vigilante “grey hat” hacker in Chicago who uses his phone and tech expertise to hack the city’s infrastructure, cameras, and other electronic gadgets. While the first game would end up being pretty successful and spawned a franchise, Ubisoft was betting big on Watch Dogs before it even launched, announcing a film based on the game in August 2013. And now, it’s finally, actually, for real being made.
On July 3, the official Ubisoft account on Twitter shared a photo of a clapper board on the set of the live-action Watch Dogs film. I can’t spot much in the first image but I do see a computer and a person using said computer, possibly using that PC to do some illegal hacking. Or maybe they are just ordering a pizza?
The upcoming Watch Dogs movie stars Tom Blyth (Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds) and Sophia Wilde (Talk To Me) in undisclosed roles. To put in perspective how long the movie has been in development hell, Blyth was only 18 when the movie was announced. Wilde was only 15, not even old enough to buy the original M-rated Watch Dogs.
We still don’t really know much about the specific plot of the upcoming film, which was originally going to be done in cooperation with Sony but is now a Regency Pictures production, but I can assume some things. I bet someone hacks a computer. I also bet someone does some tech stuff and makes all the lights shut off in the city. And I wager someone shoots a gun at people who also have guns. Very exciting.
No word on when to expect this Watch Dogs movie to release, but next year sounds probable. Will Ubisoft have a new Watch Dogs game out by then? Probably not. But hey, it’s always a great time to play Watch Dogs 2 and hope Ubisoft makes a real sequel to it and we all forget about that bland, boring, other game known as Legion.
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