'Assassin's Creed' live-action series (finally) coming to Netflix

Ten years after the ill-fated/mostly loathed 2016 movie adaptation starring Michael Fassbender, Assassin’s Creed is ready for a new live-action adaptation. Netflix has ordered its long gestating show based on Ubisoft’s game to series. And we do mean long. The streamer first announced development on the show in 2020.

The series comes from creators Roberto Patino (DMZ, Westworld, Sons of Anarchy) and David Wiener (Halo, Homecoming, The Killing). They will also serve as showrunners and executive producers. “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,” said Wiener and Patino in a joint statement. “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.”

For newcomers to the franchise who might not know anything about it, Netflix describes Assassin’s Creed as “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 show’s official logline teases a big series with big ambitions. From Netflix: “The series follows its characters across pivotal historical events as they battle to shape humanity’s destiny.”

If the series can deliver on the promise that an Assassin’s Creed show has always had it’ll be worth the wait. But hopefully it’s not that much longer before it actually arrives on Netflix.