The Division, the film may have been put on the back burner because of the pandemic

It has been a full six and a half years since it was announced the movie of The Division starring Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Prisoners Nightcrawler, Southpaw, Nocturnal Animals, Spider-Man: Far from Home) as lead actor, Stephen Gaghan as screenwriter, and David Leitch as director.

In all this time, however, we have received no updates on the status of the work, with many thinking that the project has been cancelled. In a new interview with Discussing Film, Kelly McCormick, producer of 87North Productions, clarified how things stand, revealing that the film is apparently on the back burner because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Actually, when COVID came along, we abandoned the film of The Division because it felt like a documentary. In the sense that the story is about this epidemic occurring in real time, the dangers of it, and the anxiety it creates. It was like, ‘Wow, this isn’t funny anymore,'” McCormick explained.

“We’ve all had to deal with that in real life. I think we could go back to loving the movie. It’s such a great series, and what you could do with the imagery of a team of agents coming in with that kind of post-apocalyptic perspective is really amazing, but in the end we let it go because there was COVID. I heard that it was shelved, but I’m not sure,” he concluded.

While it is unclear if any progress has been made on The Division movie, let us recall that Ubisoft is working on Assassin’s Creed and Driver TV series.