Jessica Chastain, the Crimson Peak and Zero Dark Thirty actor who is one of the most in-demand women in Hollywood, is reportedly close to closing a deal with Ubisoft to star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in the film adaptation of Ubisoft’s video game The Division.
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THR reports that Ubisoft hopes to package the film before shopping it to studios for distribution, a notion that has worked with both Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell. Like Splinter Cell, The Division carries the name of the late spy novelist Tom Clancy, whose big-screen successes include The Hunt For Red October and Clear and Present Danger.
Per the trade, “The storyline is set in dystopian New York City post a smallpox pandemic. In the third-person shooter game, the player is an agent of the Strategic Homeland Division, aka The Division, and is searching for the origins of the outbreak.”
Chastain, who has reportedly been in talks with Marvel for at least two different roles, also has a number of high-profile dramas coming up, including Miss Sloane, The Zookeeper’s Wife with Captain America baddie Daniel Bruhl, and Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game with Idris Elba.
While there’s no indication of what role she’d be playing, the game offers up several possibilities. Assuming Gyllenhaal is playing the “player character” agent, Chastain could be something as simple as another agent (in the game, it’s done in the massively multiplayer online style, so there are millions of agents running around). She could also be one of the main leaders of the project to contain, manage, and rebuild; there are heads of individual areas like Security and Medical, or for the sake of the movie she could even be a leader directly within the titular Division.
