Is the Assassin's Creed movie actually going to be good?

The first trailer was released on Wednesday, showing Michael Fassbender donning the assassin's hood. It shows promise, but we've been here before

Video game movie adaptation. It's a phrase likely to strike fear and dread into the heart of most gamers, and indeed most moviegoers. Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, Silent Hill, Hitman. All of these classic, hugely acclaimed video games have been thrust onto the big screen (or the straight-to-DVD shelves) by people whose knowledge of the source materials seems to have been passing at best. The results have been ... horrible.

Assassin's Creed, we are being told, is a different story. Produced by Ubisoft, the company that developed and published the bestselling games, it has actual star actors (Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons) and a talented director in the form of Justin Kurzel, who made the award-winning Snowtown and helmed Fassbender's gritty Macbeth movie. For once this isn't a bunch of Hollywood chancers hoping to cash in on a successful gaming brand; it's the game makers themselves, overseeing their vision as a motion picture spectacle. The Assassin's Creed titles have apparently been referenced closely by the production team, with the prop makers studying 3D representations of every weapon and costume.