Blizzard, Ubisoft and 343 Industries have come out to shill for a fictional game developer in James Franco’s upcoming movie, Why Him?
In Why Him?, James Franco plays a successful mobile developer not unlike the guy who made that terrible Flappy Bird game that was so popular a couple of years back. He’s certainly no Notch. In any case, the new 20th Century Fox trailer has a few of these well-known game developers, including Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime and Assassin’s Creed producer Aymar Azaizia to heap praise upon Franco’s character, Laird Mayhew, who developed a mobile game called Ape Assassins.
It’s a game you can actually download and play on either iPhone or Android.
Morhaime says Ape Assassins inspired Winston in Overwatch, and Azaizia claims that in Assassin’s Creed, which explores the foundations of humanity, apes came first—and Ape Assassins could well be considered a precursor to the Assassin’s Creed games. No, it makes no sense, but it’s funny regardless.
The movie’s written by Jonah Hill and John Hamburg, who wrote the script for Zoolander. It stars James Franco, Zooey Deutch, Adam Devine, Keegan-Michael Key and Bryan Cranston. It’ll be in theatres on December 23.