Few video games have endured like Assassin's Creed. Twelve different versions have been released since the game was introduced in 2007, each of them more or less clinging to the same highly enjoyable formula. Like spending the final hour of any pursuit genuinely confused about why an alien has come out of nowhere to instruct you to murder everyone with a sort of glowing death apple? Then Assassin's Creed is for you. So the news that Netflix has just commissioned a live-action Assassin's Creed series should be cause for celebration.

Another Alien film, another terrifying android that could spell humanity's downfall. In Prometheus, we were introduced to Michael Fassbender's David, a robot who was a bit too curious about the nature of extraterrestrial life. Now Fassbender is back in Alien: Covenant as "Walter," a slightly tweaked android with one important difference: He has no human emotions. That should make conversation a bit tougher, but hopefully it will prevent him from using his crew as human guinea pigs.

The highly intelligent synthetic has been created to serve. The video claims that Walter is an artificial intelligence powered by AMD, Ryzen and Radeon. READ: 4 major spoilers we learned from the official "Alien: Covenant" trailer Fassbender will be playing not one but two roles in "Alien: Covenant." Apart from Walter, the 39-year-old actor will be reprising his role from "Prometheus" as the robot named David. The first movie made us distrust David so it's no surprise if fans are skeptical of Walter.

"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" is expected to rule the box office during the long Christmas weekend, despite a glut of new films jostling for moviegoers' dollars. The second weekend for the Lucasfilm prequel is expected to easily top newcomers, including the new animated musical "Sing," the romance-in-space drama "Passengers" and the video-game action flick "Assassin's Creed." "Rogue One," released by the Walt Disney Co., dominated last weekend with $155 million in U.S.-Canada box office, making it the third-highest opening of the year. Driven by strong reviews and high anticipation among the Jedi fanbase, the space saga could add $130 million or more in domestic receipts during the six-day weekend that starts Wednesday, according to analysts. Internationally, "Rogue One" has already earned $151 million for a global total of $323.5 million so far.

"What the fuck is going on?" mutters Michael Fassbender's character through clenched teeth, reasonably early on in the course of this interminable film, based on the lucrative video game series Assassin's Creed. You can imagine each of its stars – Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Essie Davis – saying much the same thing while looking through the script, before being directed to the fee on the last page of their contract. It's an action movie, with dollops of thriller and splodges of Dan Brown conspiracy; and hardly five minutes go by without someone in a monk's outfit doing a bit of sub-parkour jumping from the roof of one building to another. And yet it is at all times mysteriously, transcendentally boring. I bet playing the game is much more exciting.

The first trailer for December's Assassin's Creed dropped last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Based on Ubisoft's long running videogame franchise, the film stars Michael Fassbender as a former death row inmate forced to step into the shoes of an ancestor of his who lived during the Spanish Inquisition. This all probably makes a lot of sense to you if you've played any one of the eleventeen Assassin's Creed videogames published by Ubisoft over the last decade. If not, you're likely left with a lot of questions as to what exactly is going on here. Fortunately, we have sunk hundreds of hours into various Assassin's Creed games and feel qualified to answer said queries.

It's a phrase likely to strike fear and dread into the heart of most gamers, and indeed most moviegoers. All of these classic, hugely acclaimed video games have been thrust onto the big screen (or the straight-to-DVD shelves) by people whose knowledge of the source materials seems to have been passing at best. The results have been ... horrible. Assassin's Creed, we are being told, is a different story. Produced by Ubisoft, the company that developed and published the bestselling games, it has actual star actors (Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons) and a talented director in the form of Justin Kurzel, who made the award-winning Snowtown and helmed Fassbender's gritty Macbeth movie.

Along with Duncan Jones's Warcraft it's been billed as the video game movie that might just make us forget all about the cinematic crimes of Uwe Boll and his ilk, that can induce glorious amnesia for those struggling to wipe clean memories of Prince of Persia, Hitman or Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. The omens so far are good. Assassin's Creed comes from the team behind last year's blistering new take on Macbeth, with director Justin Kurzel bringing back his stars Michael Fassbender (also a hands-on producer) and Marion Cotillard. Here are five takeaways from the first trailer for the film. How strange that the cute copine from France's hit Taxi comedies has developed into one of the most sublime screen beauties of modern Hollywood.

Michael Fassbender is not a big video game guy – at least not anymore. In his younger days, the actor remembers coming home from a night job unloading boxes in a warehouse and playing one particular racing game. "I'd get obsessive about it and sit there for six hours straight," Fassbender said recently by phone from Australia, where he is currently shooting the next film in the "Alien" franchise. "I decided it wasn't the best thing for me to have around." When the French video game developer Ubisoft approached Fassbender a few years ago about signing on to a film adaptation of its popular game series "Assassin's Creed," he knew next to nothing about the game, which blends history, parkour-style action, sci-fi, conspiracy theories and, as the title suggests, a whole lot of stealthy killing.