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The long-planned movie adaptation of Ubisoft's Splinter Cell video game series has been officially canceled, producer Basil Iwanyk confirmed in a recent interview with The Direct. The project, which was set to star Tom Hardy, failed to overcome script and budget challenges after multiple attempts at development.
The movie adaptation's journey began in 2012 when New Regency acquired the rights and attached Hardy to star as Sam Fisher, the NSA operative at the center of the game series. Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman later joined the project, and in 2017, Iwanyk reported having a completed script.
"That movie would have been awesome...just couldn't get it right, script-wise, budget-wise," Iwanyk said. "We had a million different versions of it, but it was going to be hardcore and awesome. That's one of the ones that got away, which is really sad."
While the movie is no more, the franchise remains active in television production. Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, an animated series from Ubisoft Film & Television, is in production at Netflix, with Liev Schreiber as Sam Fisher, and John Wick writer Derek Kolstad as lead writer and executive producer.
On the gaming front, Ubisoft Toronto announced in 2021 that it was working on a remake of the original Splinter Cell game, though development updates have been limited since the project's director, David Grivel, departed the studio in October 2022.
