I tend to think this movie was dead before it even got started, whoever even considered this was pretty dumb to be honest.
It should be noted that irregardless of your personal politics the first game which laid the groundwork for this series was basically an attempt to be offensive to a lot of the western world on the war on terror. Ubisoft being a french company, france having opposed The War On Terror for reasons of personal gain given it's breaking of embargos hidden behind the "Oil For Food Program" and still being interested in that money, and also seeking appeasement over their own riots and such.
What your looking at in the final equasion is a game about an Arab largely killing off westerners, in one of the more politically touchy periods of history. The timing of this did not go unnoticed in certain circles, nor did the creators and the politics involved in where they were operating for a lot was written about it.
In general the gaming community dismissed this because for the most part it tends to have a huge left wing, peace at any price, anti-war on terror prescence, and of course dismissed the criticisms of the game's content or any political or social considerations at all. There were enough people who didn't have a problem with the message or intent, didn't believe it, or whatever else to turn it into a major franchise.
What you might think of everything I just said above, understand that this movie is one that is going to have to be sold not just to the gaming community and the way it breaks down, but to the mainstream. With the US polarized 50-50 politically (despite both sides claiming to have a clear majority) and the what movies need to do to become successful, it really seems unlikely that this is going to be a good financial risk. Whatever your politics might be, or if you see this a-politically, or whatever else, when this hits the market it's not just what you and your friends might think, a movie like this is going to need more people. Chances are even if they spend the money to do this right, even if everyone who has bought the Assasin's Creed games showed up and bought a ticket, the movie wouldn't make enough money to be considered successful. That's a lot of people, but you have to put it in the perspective of the overall cost to cover material like this without creating another CGI-tastic crapfest that would fail on it's own on the merit of being a giant turd.
Understand also that you don't have to agree with the war on terror to find this offensive. See, the actual crusades were fought largely because the followers of Islam decided to ignore the whole bit about "men of the book" and sharing the holy sites with Christians and Jews and to expel the infidel from the Holy Land. You had people spending fortunes to make long and dangerous journies from the western world to Jerusalum, and Muslims started murdering the pilgrims horribly to keep them out. They did things like leave the tortured corpses along the roads to the holy land as a lesson to the infidels. Understand that a lot of the people who died here were nobles (or the children thereof) or connected to major wealth. One of the big things abou the crusades was that as powerful as The Church was, it probably wouldn't have actually united Europe to this cause the way it did on pure faith, the fact that the temporal powers were angry over this was one of the big reasons why all the nobles, kings, and other participants were so eager to throw in with the church, spend tons of money, and go off to liberate The Holy Land. There was more than one cause to this, religious fanatacism played a major role, but it was one of those cases where it was a perfect storm of events that caused somethibng really unlikely to get started (and continue on for a long time through multiple crusades). When you consider the nautical technology of the time and how many ships were lost just getting back and forth (treasure hunters and historians still look for them) it puts some perspective into the sheer scope of the crusades which took more than The Pope deciding he wanted to go kick some butt for lulz.
The stories about atrocities committed against Muslims are pretty much accurate, this was very much a war of vengeance. When Lord so-and-so showed up with an army he didn't just come because The Pope told him to liberale The Holy Land, he did it because he was out to avenge his son/daugher/brother/messenger/whatever. Some people torture your kid to death and hang his body on the side of a road, and yeah your going to get pissed off, and when your a medieval lord this was kind of the answer to someone asking "yah, but what are you going to do about it".
The point of this very basic, and simplistic run down is that a game showing Muslims as simply being oppressed by these horrible crusaders (and in a way justifying their actions) and has a hero running around killing them off as his major enemies (even if he kills some Arabs too) is pretty much asking for it. A lot of people who are very left wing or don't know much about it might not get it, but a lot of people who do know something about it are going to look at this version which might appeal to Muslims, but is very offensive to the Western World which is incidently the core market for this game.
Don't get me wrong here though, before anyone start screaming, I am NOT saying the Crusaders were the good guys. It's one of those cases where like most historical events everyone was basically a self-serving bastard on all relevent sides, Western and Middle Eastern, especially by modern standards of morality. Not that this matters really, what matters is that if they do this movie it's going to make a lot of the key audience go "WTF", and wind up not liking it because of the rather biased portrayals involved.
That's my thoughts as well... of course I'm speaking with the assumption that the first movie would involve the first game. If they decide to start with Enzio, then you've got the whole issue of it's treatment of the Borgias/Popes and similar things to content with.
Assasin's Creed is the kind of concept that can work for a large, but fairly limited audience of people that are open minded or political pre-disposed to think the same way. I do not think it can however hold down a truely mainstream audience. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I imagine the kind of creative control Ubisoft wants as this game's creators is to prevent the kind of re-writs which would make it palatable to the mainstream audience (which would also admittedly ruin part of the point of the game and it's storylines), and that right there means that it's not likely to get approved and financed at the level it would need to be a good movie to begin with.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but those are my thoughts. Time will tell what's going to happen.
Also for the record if your thinking not many people know much about the crusades, I think you'd be wrong. Political spin matters, but a lot of people know how those wars got started, and with all the referances to the "Templars" in popular culture recently via Dan Brown and authors like that, I think you'd be surprised.
