What If Netflix’s Assassin’s Creed Becomes Bigger Than the Games?

It’s been several years in the making, but at long last, Netflix has confirmed that its live-action Assassin’s Creed series will indeed be happening. Originally announced in 2020, the television project from Ubisoft, known for its long-running video game franchise of the same name, has been struggling to find the right creative direction. But with the recent greenlight and new showrunners, it’s finally back on track.

Netflix has named showrunners Roberto Patino and David Wiener to lead the series, a tandem of sorts combining the worldbuilding and character focus of Patino’s credits (Sons of Anarchy, Westworld) with Wiener’s sci-fi action expertise (AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, live-action Halo for Paramount+). If the upcoming collaboration could do either one of those things, it’d be a success for the franchise. But it sounds like this could have both.

The duo issued a joint statement to this effect in their own words.

“We’ve been fans of Assassin’s Creed since it first launched in 2007. Every day on this show, we’re reminded how vast this world is and how deep we can go in telling stories in it. On the surface, there’s so much action and history to explore and play with. But at the center of it, at the core, is an exploration of what it means to be human: identity, purpose, faith, and the things that bind us together for generations,” the new showrunners said.

“It’s not just an action-adventure story set across the ages,” they continued. “At its heart, this is a show about how much we all need each other, how much we need to be connected—to family, to history, to culture. And what can happen when that gets torn away from us? With a talented team at Ubisoft and the support of Netflix, we can’t wait to make something special.”

A Franchise with Global Appeal and Historical Depth

The Assassin’s Creed franchise launched in 2007 with a novel approach to social stealth mechanics set during the Crusades in the Holy Land. The franchise became a blockbuster success with the Italian Renaissance-staged Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, and Revelations, introducing the main protagonist Ezio Auditore and the series’ most famous story arcs.

Over the last 18 years, Assassin’s Creed has published 14 entries. Every single one of those titles focuses on a protagonist and setting unique to that particular chapter, ranging from the American Revolutionary War to the high seas during the Caribbean Golden Age to Victorian London to Ancient Egypt and beyond. In more recent years, the series has expanded into an expansive open-world RPG experience, with more settings to cover the likes as Ancient Greece to pre-Columbian America, to Viking-era Britain.

Assassin’s Creed’s newest installment, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, has arrived. It puts players in the feudal era of Japan, a setting fans have been clamoring to see for years. The game has received a warm reception thus far, with some crediting Ubisoft’s decision to delay the game to give it the time it needed to properly polish.

But the Netflix show remains in limbo. For all its established history and settings, the television adaptation has released next to no information thus far. Even just the basic plot of what’s familiar to those who have played the games for over a decade has yet to be confirmed by the streamer. The bare bones of the story in the series have a modern-day contemporary linking to their ancestors through genetic memory, reliving their lives in critical junctures of history, caught in the struggle between Assassins and Templars. Will the series tackle this era of the Crusades, too? It’s unknown. Will it reference or retcon the events of the Fassbender-led film? Hard to say.

Cautious Optimism Surrounds the Adaptation

The Assassin’s Creed film was a one-and-done sort of deal, at least in terms of live-action. In 2016, Michael Fassbender led a box office hit that did only moderate business despite having a little something to chew on for those who played the games. It left a black eye for how a movie with such investment from fans and studio alike could be developed so shoddily.

Does the television adaptation have the pedigree to change that? The team at Netflix and the lead showrunners have a lot of goodwill with fans for now, but nothing for the series can really be assured just yet.

The world has changed dramatically in terms of video game adaptations since the release of that film. HBO’s The Last of Us series has already set the bar for high-quality, grounded television inspired by video games. A franchise like Assassin’s Creed, from a studio with Ubisoft’s investment in expanding their IPs into TV and film, would seem to have as good of a shot at success as any with Netflix’s budget and renewed interest in genre storytelling, especially in the fantasy and sci-fi space.

The challenge is balancing the large number of protagonists over thousands of years across different civilizations and maintaining the thematic core that Assassin’s Creed has in the modern world, but at the same time making that story clear and accessible for those who have never played the games.

In the meantime, while fans hold their breath for casting announcements, release date predictions, and the first historical era of the series to be explored, the mere news of this much-needed Assassin’s Creed adaptation moving forward is a cause for celebration.

With the experience of Patino and Wiener at the creative forefront, along with the support of both Ubisoft and Netflix, it has what it needs to finally crack the code on Assassin’s Creed in live-action form.

Assassin’s Creed could become a big name in the new wave of video game adaptations being developed as the entertainment space more fully embraces them. But only if the team behind it stays true to what has made these games such a juggernaut over the past 18 years.