One of the most famous video games franchises ever, which spawned one of the most infamous video game movies ever, is set to get a new adaptation courtesy of Netflix.
The franchise in question is Assassin's Creed, a series of action-adventure titles that, since 2006, have been whisking players off to different time periods to depict an eternal war between two secretive sects.
The poorly-received 2016 Michael Fassbender movie Assassin's Creed did little to hamper plans for more live-action adaptations of this iconic franchise, judging by plans for more.
In late 2020 game publisher Ubisoft confirmed that it had made a deal with Netflix to release multiple new series based on the Assassin's Creed series including a live action, an animated and a separate anime one.
We've not heard anything concrete about the future of Assassin's Creed on Netflix for almost half a decade now. But here's what we do know, or have heard, about possible adaptations.
Assassin's Creed release date
Despite silence around the project, some people think that a live-action Assassin's Creed series could come out at some point in 2025 or 2026.
That's because the Writer's Guild of America (or WGA) has listed the show in its database, according to NexusPointNews, for that TV season. It also included a list of executive producers and staff writers for the series.
We've not heard anything to refute this claim, so it seems that "some time in 2025 or 2026" will be our best bet for when the series could come out.
What could Assassin's Creed on Netflix be about?
As the creators of the Assassin's Creed movie found out, adapting the story of the games (or even a single game) into a live-action movie or TV show is no small feat.
That's because each individual game has its own story, generally of someone in the past trying to fight an evil order or trying to find an important artefact. However there's an overarching story set in the modern-day.
To loosely summarize, each of these olden-times adventures is shown from the perspective of someone in the modern day reliving their ancestor's memories. They're trying to do so to stop the evil Templars controlling the world, or stop an impending apocalypse, and sometimes it's just to research an in-game video game?
With 14 main-title games in the series and even more spin-offs, novelizations and short films, the overarching story is all over the place, and can be confusing even to people who've played the games.
Some fans only like the historical content whereas some are really invested in the modern-day meta-story and so the creators of Assassin's Creed content on Netflix will likely need to tell a story that incorporates both, while ensuring people who are new to the franchise can still work out what's going on.
Who will be in Assassin's Creed on Netflix?
At the moment there's been no word on casting for Netflix's version of Assassin's Creed, other than that it has taken place.
However we can probably rule out Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Brendan Gleeson and Jeremy Irons from the cast list as they were the stars of the movie version of Assassin's Creed.
Who's making Assassin's Creed on Netflix?
If the WGA listing is correct, Netflix's Assassin's Creed adaptation will have Roberto Patino and David M. Wiener as showrunners. The former was creator of DMZ and wrote for Westworld and Sons of Anarchy, while the latter was one of three showrunners on another video game adaptation: Halo.
The listing names Claire Kiechel and Jaquén Castellanos as Co-Executive Producers and Sanaz Toossi, Emily St John Mandel, Sam Reynolds, Daniel Goldberg and Tom Hemmings as staff writers.
Mandel is a well-known sci-fi author who penned Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility.
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