We’re getting flooded with TV adaptations of popular video game franchises these days, but Assassin’s Creed is a better fit than most. Announced over three years ago, the Netflix show based on the long-running Ubisoft series is finally moving forward, the companies announced today, though the actual release is probably still years away.
“The Assassin’s Creed live-action series is a high-octane thriller centered on the secret war between two shadowy factions: one set on determining mankind’s future through control and manipulation, the other fighting to preserve free will,” reads a blog post from the French Publisher. “The series follows characters across pivotal historical events as they battle to shape humanity’s destiny.” Hoping for a little more detail? Sorry, that’s it.
Roberto Patino (HBO’s DMZ) and David Wiener (AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead) will be helming the project. “Beneath the scope, the spectacle, the parkour and the thrills is a baseline for the most essential kind of human story – about people searching for purpose, struggling with questions of identity and destiny and faith,” they said in a joint statement. “It is about power and violence and sex and greed and vengeance. But more than anything, this is a show about the value of human connection, across cultures, across time. And it’s about what we stand to lose as a species, when those connections break.”
Big questions for the series are whether each season will stick to a particular time period and location or hop around a lot. Also, how much the sci-fi layers will play a role in it. The premise of Assassin’s Creed, for those unfamiliar with the stealth action series or who have only played its modern incarnations, is a battle across history between competing factions where current day researchers use a device called the Animus to investigate the past, searching for artifacts related to an ancient alien civilization.
There’s a lot to chew on there, and tons of creative ways to structure an Assassins’ Creed TV show around the source material. Or Netflix could just treat it like a period show full of political intrigue and John Wick-style stealth assassinations. Ubisoft says the live-action adaptation is the “first series to be developed” as part of an agreement with Netflix that was originally announced back in 2020. Maybe we’ll hear about the next one in 2030. It certainly doesn’t sound like we’ll be hearing about that Netflix mobile spin-off of Assassin’s Creed teased back in 2022 anytime soon, if at all.
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