‘Watch Dogs’: Sophie Wilde to Lead Video Game Adaptation!!

Ubisoft is moving forward with a film adaptation of its blockbuster open-world video game series Watch Dogs at New Regency and has found its star to lead the feature forward. After a breakout performance in last year’s horror hit Talk To Me from A24, Sophie Wilde is in talks to join the project as her next big role. French director Mathieu Turi will direct the film from a screenplay penned by Oxygen writer Christie LeBlanc with revisions done by Victoria Bata.

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the film has plenty of material to pull from with three Watch Dogs installments releasing since the franchise debuted in 2014. Each game follows a different gray hat hacker who becomes entangled with the criminal underworld as they try to achieve their goals, whether it be for revenge or to expose corruption within the government and the ctOS (central Operating System), a dystopian fictional computing network that connects everyone and everything in a city and stores all personal information. These hackers manipulate the system to their advantage, causing blackouts, disarming security systems, extracting personal information, and more while traversing the world. The original game followed vigilante Aidan Pierce who sought to avenge his daughter’s death while Watch Dogs 2 focused on the wrongfully convicted Marcus Holloway who seeks to expose the dangers of the “upgraded” ctOS 2.0 with the hacker group DedSec. The most recent title, Watch Dogs: Legion, had players embody many members of DedSec hiding throughout the population in a dystopian London as they try to liberate the civilians and clear their name.

Wilde has become a highly sought-after star after a career year in 2023 that included not only the horror hit of the summer, but a turn opposite Patrick Gibson, Christoph Waltz, and Sam Neill in The Portable Door as well as a starring role in ITV‘s Tom Jones and Netflix‘s Everything Now. Her appearance in Danny and Michael Philippou‘s excellent debut feature Talk To Me, however, earned her a BAFTA nomination and an AACTA Award for Best Actress, cementing her stardom. She has since returned to Netflix in the recent Boy Swallows Universe and is next bound for a starry new A24 thriller, Babygirl, from Bodies Bodies Bodies helmer Halina Reijn.

‘Watch Dogs’ Is Ubisoft’s Latest Venture Beyond Video Games

Although the Watch Dogs franchise has received mixed reviews over the years, the series is still one of Ubisoft‘s flagships with over 50 million players. It’s a big assignment for Turi, but the director has proven to be a favorite on the festival circuit, delivering the award-winning debut feature Hostile as well as the French historical horror Gueules Noires (The Deep Dark). This adaptation marks the latest venture for Ubisoft into film and television following the release of last year’s Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix which was a mash-up of the company’s many IPs. A Far Cry series was previously announced to be in development at Netflix, as well as a live-action Assassin’s Creed show, among other projects that are still in the pipeline.