From Altair to Shadows: 18 Years of Assassin’s Creed Evolution

The popular video game franchise Assassin’s Creed has taken a while, but it’s finally headed to the small screen. Netflix has given the green light to an Assassin’s Creed series based on Ubisoft’s long-running franchise, which has been in the works at various levels of development since at least 2020.

Netflix announced that the live-action series is moving forward with two showrunners attached: Roberto Patino and David Wiener. Patino is known for work on Sons of Anarchy for FX and HBO’s Westworld, and Wiener previously led the Paramount+ Halo adaptation and co-created AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead.

In a joint statement, the showrunners announced their involvement with the series and offered some insight into their vision for the property.

“We’ve been fans of Assassin’s Creed since it launched 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,” they said. “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, transcending cultures and time. And it’s about what we stand to lose as a species when those connections break.”

Patino and Wiener also said they are working with Ubisoft and Netflix to craft an adaptation that would do justice to the scope of the Assassin’s Creed franchise.

“We are working closely with Ubisoft and Netflix to make the best version of this story possible, and we couldn’t be more excited. We have an amazing team already assembled,” the showrunners said. “We are making something undeniable for fans all over the planet.”

Assassin’s Creed Was Rich With Potential

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has had an expansive and winding history. It began as a “social stealth” action game based on a loose rendition of the Crusades in 2007. A year later, Ubisoft introduced players to Ezio Auditore, a 15th-century assassin and the protagonist of the Italian Renaissance trilogy made up of Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, and Revelations.

The series ultimately expanded to 14 mainline games over 18 years, embracing more of an open-world RPG focus in more recent entries. Additionally, in more recent games, the historical periods and regions have changed drastically, from the American Revolution and the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean to Revolutionary Paris and Victorian London, as well as Ancient Egypt and Classical Greece, and Viking-age Britain.

In the latest game, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, players get to visit feudal Japan, a setting that fans have been requesting for some time. It’s received high marks for streamlining the franchise’s newer RPG stylings, while retaining all the features that fans of Assassin’s Creed’s stealth action used to love.

What’s made the Shadows game stand out is Ubisoft’s choice to delay its release to better optimize and make the game a higher-quality entry for fans of the franchise. It’s a move that fans would likely be happy to see Netflix do for its television series.

The Basic Premise Is Familiar, But Series Details Are Hazy

The show’s specifics, for now, remain few and far between. But it’s been established that the games will at least form the foundation for the series’ plot. In both the games and the series, a centuries-old secret conflict between Assassins and Templars, two ancient and ideologically opposed factions, is at the forefront of the story as they battle to decide the fate of humanity.

The main plot device used to play out the story in both cases, however, is the Animus, a machine that the Assassins use to relive the memories of their ancestors, usually placing them in the middle of historical events all over the world.

Details like casting, plot, and character remain unknown at this time, so it’s not yet clear if the series will further explore existing video game characters or if it will break the mold with new ones. There’s also no word on if the show will intersect with the Assassin’s Creed live-action film starring Michael Fassbender, which had a separate story from the game and came out in 2016.

There’s not much more to go on, though, as fans have speculated, the TV series may follow the same route as the Fassbender film. While it didn’t perform poorly, the Fassbender movie wasn’t a smash hit, and it had mixed reviews overall. Given the fact that Netflix has previously confirmed it’s moving ahead with the series, fans will have to wait and see if any further development will make it part of the canon of Assassin’s Creed lore, or if it will be regarded like the non-canonical Fassbender movie.

The Project Comes at a High-Stakes Time for Video Game Adaptations

It’s important to note that the project’s timing could hardly be better, especially given the state of game-to-screen adaptations. HBO’s The Last of Us was a record-setter in terms of how popular faithful, emotionally impactful adaptations could be, both critically and among fans. Netflix itself had a big hit with the fantasy series The Witcher, though it too has had its share of missteps.

Assassin’s Creed has the potential to be a big hit, with two showrunners attached who have had success in their own right on other major networks. Plus, the pool of material available in the Assassin’s Creed IP is as broad as ever, which should give creators a lot of room to play in terms of historical settings and source material.

Especially given the success of The Last of Us, there’s a lot on the line for Assassin’s Creed. The Netflix series might bring as much (if not more) pressure to create a critically well-received property based on an existing IP, especially with all the money being invested in it. But with veteran showrunners attached, a big name like Ubisoft in its corner, and a beloved, lore-rich universe to draw from, Assassin’s Creed has the tools and resources to make for a monumental fantasy-historical series for the streaming era.