Netflix’s Assassin’s Creed series is finally coming together
It has been five years since Netflix first announced that it was working with Ubisoft to develop a live-action Assassin’s Creed show inspired by the hit games series. For a long time, it seemed like the project might be dead in the water given how little news there was about it. But now it looks like the streamer is ready to lock in and get down to business.
Netflix announced today that it has officially greenlit a new Assassin’s Creed series that will be showrun and executive produced by Roberto Patino (Westworld, Sons of Anarchy) and David Wiener (Halo, Brave New World.) Along with Wiener and Patino, Ubisoft’s Gerard Guillemot, Margaret Boykin, and Austin Dill, and Matt O’Toole are attached to executive produce.
Per Netflix, the new series will focus 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 show will tell stories about multiple characters living through and influencing pivotal moments in human history. That doesn’t exactly say much about what the series will look and feel like, but it does sound like pretty standard Assassin’s Creed fare.
In a statement about the show, Wiener and Patino said that they’re both excited about and humbled by all the possibilities the Assassin’s Creed IP holds. They also expressed their desire to use the series to tell a story about what humanity loses as a species as our emotional connections break.
“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,” the duo said. “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.”
Netflix has had a fair amount of success with its animated video game adaptations like the Castlevania series, Arcane, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. But the streamer has had a much more inconsistent track record on the live-action side of things between its soon-to-be finished Witcher series and its short-lived Resident Evil riff. A five year gap between a project being announced and its subsequent greenlight isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and Wiener and Patino could absolutely be cooking up something fantastic. But we’re going to need to see and hear a bit more about what this Assassin’s Creed is going to be before people can get excited.