This comes as a huge blow to fans that want a faith­ful adap­ta­tion of the PoP fran­chise. A com­pany spokesper­son for Ubisoft, in speak­ing with CVG, said that Ubisoft has no involve­ment with Disney’s Prince of Per­sia movie:

“The new Prince of Per­sia film is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between [Prince of Per­sia cre­ator] Jor­dan Mech­ner and Dis­ney,” it said. “Ubisoft has no involvement.”

This also means that the recent acqui­si­tion of Hybride Tech­nol­ogy by Ubisoft is com­pletely unre­lated to the Prince of Per­sia movie, some of us had hoped that the effects stu­dio behind 300 would soon be com­ing aboard the project — though this lat­est news does put down these rumors, a fur­ther com­ment is encouraging:

“Hybride and Ubisoft will work together to share tech­nol­ogy and develop tools in order to opti­mize the cre­ation of both video games and visual effects. Ulti­mately, we expect to use the part­ner­ship to lever­age our brands in the movie industry.”

Just Jared have snapped shots of Jake Gyl­len­haal, sword in hand, prepar­ing for his next role as Prince Das­tan in the Prince of Per­sia movie, in Eng­land. He’s also let­ting his hair grow long:

Thanks hobo123!

Vari­ety have con­firmed that both Alfred Molina (Doc Ock in Spider-man 2) and oscar win­ning Ben Kings­ley shall be a part of the Prince of Per­sia movie:

Molina will play Sheik Amar, who becomes a men­tor to the prince.
Shoot­ing is slated to begin in July in the U.K. and Morocco.

Vari­ety later con­firmed that Kings­ley shall be play­ing the vil­lain Nizam,

In the fan­tasy actioner, Kings­ley por­trays Nizam, who plots to kill his brother King Shahrman and blame it on Prince Das­tan so he can take the throne.

Thanks hobo123

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter have today con­firmed the actors to play the two main roles in the Prince of Per­sia Movie. Jake Gyl­len­haal (Don­nie Darko) has been offi­cially cast as Das­tan, the young prince — a choice I fear many fans will not be happy about. Whilst Gemma Arter­ton (Quan­tum of Solace) has been cast as the princess Tamina.

In the fan­tasy adven­ture, Gyl­len­haal will play Das­tan, a young prince in sixth cen­tury Per­sia who must join forces with Tam­ina (Arter­ton), a feisty and exotic princess, to pre­vent a vil­lain­ous noble­man from pos­sess­ing the Sands of Time, a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its pos­ses­sor to rule the world.

Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard, Jor­dan Mech­ner and Boaz Yakin wrote the script, which is based on the many games cre­ated by Jor­dan Mechner.

Bruck­heimer is pro­duc­ing, while Mike Sten­son, Chad Oman and Patrick McCormick are exec producing.

Pro­duc­tion is set to start in July.

(Pics thanks to Gemma​-Arter​ton​.net)

Cin­ema Notizie has posted an exclu­sive Prince of Per­sia movie poster. Whether this is gen­uine is debat­able, and given the dis­tinct lack of any offi­cial pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial being released, I would guess that this is fake. Although it’s still an inter­est­ing and atmos­pheric poster:

Just a quick one to fill you in. In our post about the false Orlando Bloom rumors, some com­menters have pointed out that Dis­ney have recently offered the role to Broke­back Moun­tain star, Jake Gyl­len­haal. Accord­ing to Latino Review and their anony­mous sources, they believe this could hap­pen, we’re doubt­ful for now.

Rumors have started cir­cu­lat­ing the net that Orlando Bloom had landed a $40m deal to star as the Prince in the Per­sia tril­ogy. These have spread like wild­fire across our dig­i­tal lands amidst uproar at the pay pack­age and the choice of actor.

Com­ing Soon, wise as ever, did the clever thing of con­tact­ing Dis­ney. Their response? These rumors are plainly false — and Orlando Bloom shall not be fea­tur­ing in the tril­ogy.

Vari­ety have some impor­tant and sig­nif­i­cant news for us about the Prince of Per­sia movie adap­ta­tion. It seems that direc­tor Mike Newell has been scout­ing loca­tions in Morocco, with stu­dio work tak­ing place at Pinewood, Eng­land. With shoot­ing set to start in mid-June.

Choice of Morocco as a shoot­ing loca­tion will be a boost for the North African country’s film biz.

[…]

“Pro­duc­ers are always look­ing for cheap places to shoot and Morocco is one of them,” said Dune Films’ Jimmy Abounouom, who is rep­ping the Moroc­can shoot for Disney.

Dune execs pre­vi­ously han­dled the Moroc­can shoots of Tom Hanks star­rer “Char­lie Wilson’s War” and Kim­berly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss.”

“Prince of Per­sia” will also lens in Blighty’s Pinewood Shep­per­ton stu­dios. Project is in pre-production. Abounouom told Vari­ety he expects the Moroc­can sec­tion of the shoot to start in mid-June, labor wran­gles notwithstanding.

Thanks to Net­tle (Caitie)