Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan will write and direct The Division film

Ubisoft confirmed in August 2016 that a film adaptation of The Division is in the works, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain heading up the cast. Today, the publisher announced that the film will be written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, who won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award in 2001 as the screenwriter for Traffic, and was nominated for a second Oscar in 2006 for his work on Syriana.

“I’m excited to work with Ubisoft Motion Pictures and collaborate with their team at Massive Entertainment to bring The Division to the big screen, they’re great guys, exceptionally creative, and willing to take risks,” Gaghan said. “The game has been an enormous success, in large part due to the visual landscape they created, their vision of a mid-apocalyptic Manhattan. It’s immersive, wonderfully strange, and yet familiar, filled with possibilities. It’s also remarkable to be able to collaborate with Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal early in the process. We all feel the story Ubisoft created is more relevant than ever.”

As noted by Variety, Gaghan isn't known for making "action-heavy tentpoles," but the setting of The Division does have the potential to be (or at least include) a more thoughtful take on human reactions and behavior during an end-of-the-world crisis. Who will we become? What will we do? When society collapses, does humanity necessarily go with it?

Of course, it might just be a whole lot of people shooting at each other, too. Compromise, cooperation, and rebuilding isn't exactly prime fodder for a summer blockbuster, after all. We'll find out soon enough, hopefully: The announcement doesn't make any mention of a release date, but IMDB says it's scheduled for sometime in 2018.

Speaking of The Division, earlier today Ubisoft revealed what's coming in Last Stand, the third and final piece of the game's "Year One" DLC. Get up to speed on that right here.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.