The Splinter Cell movie that would have starred Tom Hardy as Sam Fisher was confirmed to be cancelled.
As reported by The Direct, the project’s producer, Basil Iwanyk, confirmed it himself. Iwanyk said:
“‘That movie would have been awesome… Just couldn’t get it right, script-wise, budget-wise. But it was going to be great. We had a million different versions of it, but it was going to be hardcore and awesome. That’s one of the ones that got away, which is really sad.”
Ubisoft shopped around the idea of a Splinter Cell movie in 2012. That was a year before the latest game in the franchise, Splinter Cell Blacklist, was released. That was two console generations ago, and far apart from the woes that the company faces today.
Iwanyk got attached to the project in 2013, months after Tom Hardy was attached to star. At this time, Hardy just saw his profile rise in Hollywood after his portrayal of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises that same year.
Iwanyk confirmed that the project was still in production in 2017, a year after the Prince of Persia movie released to resounding negative reception. Iwanyk stated that they hoped that the Splinter Cell movie could reverse the trend of bad movie adaptations of video games.
Since that time, Hardy found a career resurgence switching from DC to Marvel, playing Venom in 2018. And then the trend of bad video game movies and shows ended before Ubisoft’s project got off the ground.
Things started soft with the fairly received Detective Pikachu movie in 2019, followed by the Sonic the Hedgehog movie the following year. Last year saw the release of The Last Of Us HBO show, and then the record breaking hit Super Mario Bros. Movie. This year we got the surprise success of the Fallout show, and all these little projects are driving producers to step away from the comics IPs and make shows and movies about video games.
It’s definitely easy to see Splinter Cell could have been that big video game breakout hit first, but Ubisoft didn’t play their cards right. The ideal time to bring Sam Fisher to the big screen would have been the post 2001 zeitgeist that the games also debuted in. So, they should have tried as soon as the first game proved to be a hit.
But outside of that, maybe these producers could have launched their own government espionage genre film revival if they had made a good film. Given Ubisoft’s state of affairs now, it’s hard to imagine that they would try to greenlight this again in the near future.
