Jake Gyllenhaal is set to star in a big-screen adaptation of record-breaking video game Tom Clancy’s The Division. Gyllenhaal will also act as producer on the project, according to Variety.
The video game, a third-person shooter, is gaming giant Ubisoft’s fastest-selling product, making $330 million (Dh1.2 billion) within five days of its release in March.
The game is set in New York City during the outbreak of a virus, with the player taking on the role of an agent investigating while avoiding increased criminal activity.
The film would be Gyllenhaal’s second video game adaptation, after he took the lead in 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The film was a critical and commercial failure.
The Division will also hope for a better response than Duncan Jones’s video game adaptation Warcraft, which has a 24 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and faces an uphill struggle at the box office. Later this year, Michael Fassbender will take on the title role in Assassin’s Creed.
Gyllenhaal, after appearing in the disappointing dramas Southpaw and Demolition, will next be seen in Tom Ford’s thriller Nocturnal Animals, Boston Marathon tale Stronger and Bong Joon-ho’s monster movie Okja, in which he stars alongside Tilda Swinton.