Movies

'Assassin's Creed' Viral Marketing Teases Some Kind Of Mysterious Something Or Another

assassin's creed viral marketing
By Jacob Hall

Director Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed movie opens exactly one year from today and you know what that means: the marketing has begun. The adaptation of the long-running and occasionally beloved video game series has been filming for a few months now, but details of any kind have been shaky at best. Is this a direct adaptation of a single game in the franchise? A mishmash of concepts drawn from across the series and assembled into one story? A totally new storyline that will coexist alongside the rest of the games? Who is star Michael Fassbender playing, exactly? What's up with that photo from October? Those are the questions that are on our minds now that the hype machine is slooowly starting to turn its gears.

And no, none of those questions will be answered today. But we do get a banner, a new official website, a mysterious phone number that takes you to a mysterious message. Let's dive into the Assassin's Creed viral marketing and see what it has to offer.

Let's get the boring part out of the way first: this banner, which is little more than the movie's logo against a black background. Anyone who has ever walked down the video game shouldn't be too surprised by this. It's a little different from the title treatment that has graced the title screen of every game in the series, but not by much.

assassin's creed viral marketing

And now, let's move onto the slightly more exciting bits, shall we? 20th Century Fox has launched a faux website for Absertgo, the fictional (and yes, evil) corporation who is responsible for much of the plot in the Assassin's Creed series. For those out of the loop, Abstergo has developed technology that allows people to relive their "genetic memories," which means they can relive the lives of their ancestors in a VR-like environment. And since Abstergo is the modern front for the Templars, an secret society that has tried its hand at world domination for centuries, nothing good comes from them constantly peeking into the pasts of friends and foes alike. If the Assassin's Creed movie is like the games, it'll mostly take place almost entirely inside one of these genetic flashbacks, as a character attempts to solve modern mysteries by looking into the past.

Yeah, it's certainly not hard science fiction, but it can be fun.

Anyway, the Abstergo site has nothing to offer at the moment beyond the corporation's logo and a list of 11 cities from around the world: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, Madrid, London, Paris, Osaka-Kobe, Shanghai, and Moscow. So, what does this mean? Well, the official Assassin's Creed Twitter feed posted this image of a business card:

And what happens when you try to call Mr. Alan Rikkin, CEO of Abstergo? You get this message:

Hello, you've reached the voicemail of Alan Rikkin. I'll be out of the office on business until March 25 with limited availability.

And this is where we'll take a stab in the dark. Is it possible that those 11 cities will play host to special events showcasing footage from the movie on March 25, 2016? That's not beyond the realm of possibility – tons of major movies have drummed up hype by screening footage at exclusive events in a handful of locations. It's also likely that March 25, 2016 could see the arrival of the first trailer. After all, that is the release date of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which would be a great platform on which to advertise a big December release.

Plus, both films feature Jeremy Irons and nothing ignites a movie's box office like whipping Jeremy Irons fans into a frenzy.

Assassin's Creed, which will apparently be like Batman Begins and Blade Runner because that's exactly what sounds cool on the internet, will dive into a haystack after jumping off a cathedral on December 21, 2016.

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