A TV show based on Ubisoft’s Far Cry series, co-created by It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s Rob Mac and Alien: Earth‘s Noah Hawley, does not sound like the most realistic prospect. Yet this was the rumor that spread a few months back after Ubisoft accidentally uploaded an announcement to its official site, before hurriedly deleting it. Now, The Hollywood Reporter has announced that yes, it’s all true, it’s official, and it’s coming to Hulu and Disney+.
Earlier this month it was revealed that writer and showrunner Noah Hawley had signed a new 10-year deal with Disney’s FX to continue producing shows for the network, including a second season of Alien: Earth. But given the Fargo and Legion writer’s contract was reported to be a nine figure deal, more was clearly involved. We now know that the first new project from Hawley is to be a Far Cry series, intended to be an anthology show (like Hawley’s Fargo) with a new story each season.
The show will be co-created by another of FX’s long-time darlings, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia‘s Rob Mac (who recently changed his name from the far harder to spell Rob McElhenney), suggesting that it might not be the most straight-faced of adaptations. Hawley (or Hawley’s people) describes the pair working together as bringing their “shared irreverent, ambitious sensibility.”
Plots are clearly all under wraps at this point, but FX has made clear it’ll be a fresh new story each season (suggesting a lot of confidence in a show that’s yet to even be written), matching the nature of the Far Cry game series.
Everyone involved shared the usual gushing praise for each other that you always see in press releases, explaining how working with the other is a lifelong dream come true, etc. I’ll spare you. But Hawley did explain a bit about why Far Cry. “Each game is a variation of a theme,” he explains, “the same way each season of Fargo is a variation on a theme. To create a big action show that can change from year to year, while always exploring the nature of humanity through this complex and chaotic lens, is a dream come true.” Oh sorry, another dream coming true snuck through.
It’s good to see there are no direct promises of adapting the specific plots of the various Far Cry games, given how they are prone to fall back on racist tropes and clumsily offensive stereotypes, or its cackhanded attempts to flip that script. Oh, and also that all the games’ stories are terrible. However, what the central premise does offer to a TV show is an opportunity to explore big, complicated topics (cults, apocalypses, prehistoric life…) in an entertainingly violent way. It’ll also be fascinating to see which Far Cry it leans toward, given the original game is really the first game in the Crysis franchise, how Far Cry 2 is revered for its focus on realism and broken cars, while Far Cry Primal was set 12,000 years in the past, and Far Cry: Blood Dragon was set in a nonsensical conflation of ’80s Saturday morning cartoons and straight-to-video ultra-violence, and a featured dragon. At least they have a broad pool to draw from?
