What Assassin’s Creed Can Learn from HBO’s The Last of Us

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed video game franchise is finally getting a live-action series on Netflix. The streaming service has greenlit the project, which had been stuck in development hell for some time. Now, two showrunners have been attached to the series, which has been in the works since at least 2020.

Netflix confirmed the news in a statement and announced that the project has found a new set of showrunners in Roberto Patino and David Wiener. Patino previously wrote for FX’s Sons of Anarchy as well as HBO’s Westworld, while Wiener has experience leading the Paramount+ show Halo, as well as working on AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead.

The two showed their excitement about being involved in the series in a joint statement. “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,” they said.

“The baseline, beneath the scope, the spectacle, the parkour, and the thrills, is 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.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Ubisoft and Netflix on bringing Assassin’s Creed to the screen, and we can’t wait to share this show with the world. They have entrusted us with this franchise and the legions of fans who love it, and we are proud to say that we have an amazing team hard at work to make this the undeniable show for fans all over the planet,” the showrunners added.

A Short History of Assassin’s Creed

If you haven’t kept up with the Assassin’s Creed series over the past 18 years, the series is deep in both lore and scope. The game first hit in 2007 as a “social stealth” video game set during the Third Crusade. But it’s the Renaissance Italy trilogy of Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, and Revelations that helped cement the Assassins as a household name in video games. Led by the popular Ezio Auditore, those three games in particular were filled with historical adventure, some heady philosophical quandaries, and some truly tense combat.

Assassin’s Creed has gone on to include 14 mainline installments to date over the last 18 years, as the series has evolved in terms of gameplay style and setting. The games have expanded from the more stealth-focused early entries to a larger open-world RPG focus, and in that time they’ve tackled different historical periods and locales, including the American Revolution, the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean, Revolutionary Paris, Victorian London, Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, Viking-era Britain, and most recently, Baghdad at the dawn of the Islamic Golden Age.

Ubisoft also made good on one of players’ longstanding requests last year, bringing the action to feudal Japan with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. It has received critical acclaim for streamlining and improving on the most recent RPG-style entries in the franchise, while not sacrificing the parts of the Assassin’s Creed experience that long-time players are familiar with. One key reason for the game’s success, as well as for the fan optimism around the show, is that Ubisoft has taken its time with the most recent entry, allowing more development time than some of the previous entries. Fans are hoping that Netflix and the new team will take a similar approach in order to make sure they do right by the iconic intellectual property.

Assassin’s Creed Series at a Glance

So far, very little information has been released about what the show will be like and how it will take on the task of adapting the large game world. But as is the case with the games, the conflict between the Assassins and the Templars is expected to be the main focus of the narrative. The two sides, shrouded in mystery, are waging an ancient battle over the fate of the future of humanity. The Animus is the device that unites the disparate stories, a machine that enables modern-day characters to re-experience their genetic memories, living out the lives of their ancestors in different periods of history.

As for whether this series will be a direct continuation of existing Assassin’s Creed stories and characters, it’s still too early to tell. Casting has not yet been announced, and no details about the overall narrative have been released. It’s clear that, at the very least, showrunners Patino and Wiener plan to bring something of themselves to the adaptation, just as the source material itself has changed over time.

Assassin’s Creed series lore could allow them to hook into one of many storylines to further explore the political intrigue, or they could take the show in an entirely new direction. And it’s probably safe to say that, much like the 2016 Michael Fassbender-led film, the Netflix series will likely take the latter approach, with Netflix possibly using the show as a jumping-off point for new viewers.

The most recent entry, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, is taking a similar approach to a major, longtime player request by exploring Japan. In that sense, the Netflix series could be a major boon for fans to jump into one of the main series settings for the first time. After all, the Fassbender film, while a modest box office success, was not exactly well received, so it’s possible Netflix will leave that interpretation of Assassin’s Creed out of continuity completely.

Netflix’s move on Assassin’s Creed is not without risk, but it also could be a major boon. It comes as the video game-to-screen adaptation is in high demand, especially in the case of larger franchises with expansive lore. It remains to be seen whether Assassin’s Creed will live up to The Witcher level of success on Netflix, but the series has a globally popular brand and a diverse historical sandbox to play in.

Now, it’s simply a matter of waiting for more announcements on casting, script, and production development as work continues on the show. But if Netflix and Ubisoft can pull off a quality Assassin’s Creed TV series, it could be one of the big fantasy-historical sagas of the streaming era.