After years of discussion of collaboration between Ubisoft and Netflix, today we got official confirmation that a live-action Assassin’s Creed series has been greelit at Netflix. Robert Patino (Westworld, DMZ) and David Wiener (Halo, Fear The Walking Dead) will lead the project as co-creators, showrunners, and executive producers. Gerard Guillemot, Margaret Boykin, Austin Dill, and Matt O’Toole will also serve as executive producers.
If this news sounds familiar, you’re not imagining things. In 2020, Netflix announced the show, led at the time by executive producers Jason Altman and Danielle Kreinik. Then, in June 2021, we learned the project would be led by showrunner Jeb Stuart, but by January of the next year, Stuart had left the project, according to Collider.
The show was not canceled, however, and this new duo of showrunners is seemingly its latest form. Now that the show has been greenlit, it can formally move from development into production and is more likely to actually come out.
The Assassin’s Creed series is known for its detailed historical settings, typically focusing on major cities at pivotal moments in history. We don’t know exactly when or where this live-action series will be set, but according to a description provided on Ubisoft’s news page, it might take place at several time periods.
The description reads, “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. The series follows characters across pivotal historical events as they battle to shape humanity’s destiny.”
Later in the announcement, a joint statement from showrunners Patino and Wiener communicates their feelings on the games as they begin developing the show. “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 write. “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.”
For more on live-action video game adaptations, see who was cast as Link and Zelda in the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie.
