Ubisoft is in talks with Paramount to develop a big screen adaptation of the best selling video game series, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Paramount isn’t the first studio to eye the games for the big screen, as Warner Bros. briefly eyed the project, but lost interest.
The stealth action games follow covert operative Sam Fisher, who is part of a top-secret branch of the National Security Agency, called the Third Echelon. The series currently has six installments, with a seventh title in the works, called Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist. It’s expected to debut in mid 2013.
Paramount is currently the front runner for the movie rights, according to Deadline, but a binding deal isn’t likely to be signed soon, due to the inherent complications that are involved with a project like this. Video game adaptations have not done very well in the past, and Ubisoft wants to keep a tight grip on how the film gets translated.
Novelist Clancy certainly has a bit of history at Paramount. The studio produced the Jack Ryan movies starring Alec Bladwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck, and are currently hoping to reboot the franchise with Chris Pine starring. They’re also working on adapting a Clancy novel called Without Remorse, which follows a mercenary named John Clark.