Five years after Ubisoft announced its deal with Netflix to make an Assassin’s Creed series, Netflix has finally confirmed that the series has been given the “green light.”
This one has been on the way for a long time. But will it be any good?
Netflix’s Assassin’s Creed series will be a live-action production, not an animated series. And it has some pretty big names behind it. Roberto Patino and David Wiener will collaborate as executive producers and showrunners.
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Experience from the gaming world and TV
Although these two have not worked together before, they have massive experience both in TV and video game adaptations.
David Wiener was the showrunner of the Halo TV series and has also worked on series such as Homecoming and Fear the Walking Dead. Patino has worked on DMZ, Westworld, and Sons of Anarchy.
“We’ve been fans of Assassin’s Creed since it was released in 2007. Every day we work on this series, we leave excited and humbled by the opportunities Assassin’s Creed gives us,” the showrunner duo said in a joint statement.
“Behind the scope, the spectacle, the parkour and the suspense lies a story about the most essential human being… It is about power, violence, sex, greed and revenge.”
What can we expect?
So far, no screenwriters or actors have been announced, but the description gives us a small hint of what Netflix’s Assassin’s Creed will be about.
“Assassin’s Creed is a high-drama thriller that revolves around a secret war between two shadowy factions – one determined to control the future of humanity through manipulation, while the other fights to preserve free will,” Netflix says.
“The series follows its characters through crucial historical events as they fight to shape the fate of humanity.”
How much “Animus” will there be?
What is still unclear is how much the Netflix series will delve into the “Animus” part of the Assassin’s Creed universe. Early games in the series used the Animus concept as a core of the narrative – where people in the present were injected into the past to relive historical events. But later titles have been more rooted in their own time and setting.
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The fact that Netflix is now giving the green light to this probably expensive series may be related to the relative success of the latest game in the series, Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This is set in Japan – an environment fans have been asking Ubisoft to explore since the early days of the series.
According to Gamespot, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the third best-selling game this year so far in the United States.
Not the first adaptation
Of course, this won’t be the first major film adaptation of Assassin’s Creed. In 2016, a feature film starring Michael Fassbender was released. It was not a huge success in theaters and was slaughtered by critics, with a paltry 18% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Hopefully, Netflix’s TV series will be far better. But if you’re curious, you can stream the movie on Netflix, Prime Video, or Disney+ right now.
