Netflix Is Making An Assassin’s Creed’ Show, Which Game Will Be Adapted?

More and more studios are rolling the dice on video game TV shows, given the recent success of live-action titles like Sonic, The Last of Us and Fallout, along with animated series, mostly on Netflix, like Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Arcane and Castlevania.

Now, Netflix is diving back in with a nearly 20-year-old franchise, Assassin’s Creed. The streamer has just announced that it will be adapting the game for live action. But which game? That’s a good question. They aren’t saying, or even if they are adapting one of the games. The show will be made by Roberto Patino (Westworld, Sons of Anarchy) and David Wiener (Halo, The Killing), so that’s certainly a bit of a mixed bag (we don’t talk about the live-action Halo show).

Here’s the statement from the two about the news:

“We’ve been fans of Assassin’s Creed since its release in 2007,” Wiener and Patino said. “Every day we work on this show, we come away excited and humbled by the possibilities that Assassin’s Creed opens to us. 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. 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. We’ve got an amazing team behind us with the folks at Ubisoft and our champions at Netflix, and we’re committed to creating something undeniable for fans all over the planet.”

Well that’s a bit flowery for this series in particular. And here’s the official description: The Assassin’s Creed show is ““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 series follows its characters across pivotal historical events as they battle to shape humanity’s destiny.”

In other words, this is about the Assassins versus the Templars and…that’s it. We don’t know if this is adapting a game, or making up its own story like the extremely bad (18% on Rotten Tomatoes) 2016 Assassin’s Creed movie starring Michael Fassbender. Yeah, that did not go well.

Which game should be adapted? Well, if you want to go by the “best” AC game, I suppose we can take a look at historical Metacritic scores. In chronological order:

• Assassin’s Creed Shadows – 82
• Assassin’s Creed Mirage – 76
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – 80
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – 83
• Assassin’s Creed Origins – 81
• Assassin’s Creed Syndicate – 76
• Assassin’s Creed Unity – 72
• Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag – 88
• Assassin’s Creed 3 – 84
• Assassin’s Creed Revelations – 89
• Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood – 89
• Assassin’s Creed II – 90
• Assassin’s Creed – 81

The general pattern here is that the series started out strong back when it felt novel, with the Ezio-based ACII being the highest scored in the series. Then it went into a downturn with Unity and Syndicate. Now, it’s gone up a bit, but not to the level of the old games.

Adapting the original AC may make the most sense, given that it serves as an origin story, and in theory, future seasons could continue on with other games and other assassins from other games. ACII is the highest scored. I would say Assassin’s Creed Black Flag is the fan-favorite entry. Valhalla is the best-selling in the series. Assassin’s Creed Shadows just came out and was a big seller. My personal favorite is Odyssey. I really, really would not recommend they invent a story out of thin air like they did before.

This partnership with Netflix and Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed has existed since 2020, but this is the first project to come from it. This news, however, does not come with an actual release date, or even a release window, and at this point, my guess would be 2027, as this is a pretty ambitious project. Hopefully we hear more actual details soon.

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