Justin Kurzel Wants the Potential ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Sequel to Go Cold War Noir

Even though Assassin’s Creed hasn’t even come out yet, and its sequel prospects are pretty up in the air, despite an ensemble cast of some of the most talented actors working today (let’s be honest, the trailers look bizarre, but we’re staying hopeful), director Justin Kurzel is already making plans for the next installment. He knows where he wants it to be set, and it’s about as far away from the Spanish Inquisition as you can get, without going in the opposite direction. (Assassins fighting Templars and dinosaurs would be cool though. Hmm. Anyone have Kurzel’s email?)

Speaking with the French publication Premiere (thanks to DarkHorizons for the translation), Kurzel revealed that he’d want his dream Assassin’s Creed sequel to be set in the noir environment of the Cold War-era American 1950s.

I thought about maybe not going too far back, maybe into, like, the ’50’s in America. You know, I think that could be a really interesting period around the Cold War. Traditionally, I think they’ve gone back further than that. Recent history is something I’m quite interested in. You can definitely kind of do a film-noir thing to it.

The games have already had the Renaissance, the American Revolution, and the swashbuckling Caribbean as settings. A more recent era could actually be pretty cool, and would at least force the Assassins to get rid of those weird-looking hoodies. When asked why he chose the Spanish Inquisition for the movie, Kurzel said,

I think there’s great scope there to kind of go into. I think you have to go into volatile points of history, that’s why the Spanish Inquisition works so well, because you got something the assassins could rally against in terms of the religious persecution that was going on there.

A Double Indemnity or The Killers-style Assassin’s Creed film could actually be kind of awesome, mixing history with time travel and film noir genre conventions (and parkour, of course). And if Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard get to be in it, so much the better.

Assassin’s Creed opens in theaters December 21.