‘Assassin’s Creed’ Movie: Oscar Winner Marion Cotillard To Star In Projected Blockbuster

Assassin’s Creed, the hit Ubisoft video game that has sold more than 91 million copies worldwide, will become the next major movie franchise as well, if Ubisoft and film producers New Regency get their way. Now, they’ve signed up a certified Oscar winner to help them get there.

Marion Cotillard, who became the second French actress to win a Best Actress Academy Award when she took home the Oscar for her performance in the 2007 film La Vie en Rose, has signed on for a role in the Assassin’s Creed movie — but producers are currently remaining secretive about what Cotillard’s role in the film will actually be.

They did reveal on Friday, however, that if the Assassin’s Creed film franchise is a successful as they expect it will be, Marion Cotillard will appear in not just one, but several films in the series, the first installment of which is scheduled to hit multiplex screens on December 21, 2016.

Despite her pedigree in art films such as La Vie en Rose and the current Two Days, One Night — for which she is again nominated for an Academy Award — the 39-year-old native of Paris has dabbled in the blockbuster genre previously.

Cotillard appeared in the 2012 Christopher Nolan-directed hit The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final installment in Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Cotillard had a prominent role as a close associate of Batman’s alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, in the film.

She earlier appeared in another Nolan-directed summer sci-fi blockbuster, the 2010 hit Inception.

But Assassin’s Creed appears to be her biggest role to date in a blockbuster franchise film. After German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender, Cotillard is only the second cast member announced for the film adaptation of the wildly popular video game series about competing secret societies who play a behind-the-scenes role throughout all world history.

Just as Marion Cotillard has experience in a previous superhero blockbuster film, her co-star Fassbender has portrayed the Marvel Comics character Magneto in two installments of the X-Men franchise series.

The Assassin’s Creed movie is said, by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, to have started the production process already. Principal photography is scheduled to take place in the fall of this year.