Netflix has officially given the greenlight to a live-action series based on the globally successful Assassin’s Creed video games.
Five years in the making, rumblings of the series first surfaced when the streamer struck a deal with the game’s developer Ubisoft back in 2020.
They’ve now announced the project is finally ready to take a leap of faith with Emmy-nominated screenwriters Roberto Patino (Westworld and Sons of Anarchy) and David Wiener (Halo) taking the reins as creators, showrunners and executive producers.
Based on one of the biggest game franchises in history, which has sold over 200 million copies, each game follows a character in the present day who taps into the memories of their ancestors, members of a secret order of assassins who influence world events.
A logline for the upcoming Netflix adaptation reads: “Assassin’s Creed 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, while the other fights to preserve free will.
“The series follows its characters across pivotal historical events as they battle to shape humanity’s destiny.”
Showrunners Patino and Wiener added in a joint statement: “We’ve been fans of Assassin’s Creed since its release in 2007.
“Every day we work on this show, we come away excited and humbled by the possibilities that Assassin’s Creed opens to us.
“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.
“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. We’ve got an amazing team behind us with the folks at Ubisoft and our champions at Netflix, and we’re committed to creating something undeniable for fans all over the planet.”
This won’t be the first highly successful video game franchise Netflix has adapted – it’s recently had success with the likes of animated shows Castlevania, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Arcane, which is based on the online game League of Legends.
They also brought the horror franchise Resident Evil to life with a live-action series in 2022.
Netflix’s Assassin’s Creed adaptation follows the much-maligned feature film based on the games released in 2016, which starred Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
Assassin’s Creed does not yet have a release date.