Netflix's Assassin's Creed: Everything to Know

Streaming giant Netflix and video game publisher Ubisoft have been teaming up to put out some impressive animated TV adaptations of some of Ubisoft's games — and now the two companies are taking their partnership to the next level with a live-action series based on Assassin's Creed, which has been Ubisoft's flagship brand for almost two decades.

It's not a small endeavor, as Assassin's Creed will be an action-heavy historical drama that should be pretty expensive to produce. But the potential upside is pretty clear as well, as Assassin's Creed has all the same sort of courtly intrigue, backstabbings, sex, and cosmic destinies that made Game of Thrones so entertaining. It's not very tough at all to see why Netflix would press start on this one.

That said, it's not the first time Ubisoft has tried to bring Assassin's Creed to the screen. In 2016, the company put out a not-particularly-well-regarded movie with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard — which was a blast in its historical portions set in 15th century Spain, and an awful slog in the CGI-heavy present-day parts. Hopefully this new series won't have that same problem. 

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But we're still in the early stages on Assassin's Creed, and things are pretty wide open. Let's go through what we know so far. 

Assassin's Creed potential release date

With production slated to get underway in 2026, we'll most likely have to wait until sometime in 2027 before we can watch the Assassin's Creed series.

Assassin's Creed cast and crew

Toby Wallace and Lola Petticrew will serve in the lead roles in the Assassin's Creed series, which likely means at least one of them will be a member of the Assassin Brotherhood — despite the name, there are no rules barring members of any gender from joining the Brotherhood. In fact, it was an ancient Egyptian woman who founded the group to begin with, as we saw in the 2017 game Assassin's Creed Origins. Also starring in the series will be Zachary Hart, Laura Marcus. and Tanzyn Crawford. 

Splitting showrunner duties are David Wiener and Roberto Patino. Wiener most recently served as showrunner on Season 2 of the maligned Halo series, and he previously wrote for Homecoming, Fear the Walking Dead, and The Killing. Patino created the 2024 HBO Max mini-series DMZ and wrote for Westworld and Sons of Anarchy. Johan Renck, who won an Emmy for directing HBO's Chernobyl, has signed on to direct Assassin's Creed.

What is Assassin's Creed?

The Assassin's Creed franchise centers on an epic, centuries-long conflict between a pair of secret societies — the Assassin Brotherhood, which stands up for the little guy, and the Templar Order, which wants to rule the world. Toward those ends, the two groups are constantly battling over ancient relics called Pieces of Eden, super-advanced technology capable of all sorts of neat tricks, including mind control, that were left behind by the aliens who created humanity in the distant past. 

The video games take place over a span of about 2400 years, with present-day storylines that bring it all together. The central conceit of the franchise is that a character in the present uses a device called the Animus to tap into ancestral memories stored in their DNA, reliving history through their ancestors' eyes, the ultimate purpose being to use these memories to track the Pieces of Eden through the past in order to find out where they are now. 

Because of that unusual franchise structure, there's not much reason to assume the show will directly adapt the stories told in any of the games. While Ubisoft and Netflix certainly could make the Assassin's Creed TV series into The Ezio Show — Ezio is one of the series main protagonists — they could just as easily tell an original story that either ignores the games (like the Michael Fassbender movie did) or takes place in between them. 

If they were going to adapt existing game storylines, though, Ezio would be the one — the series will reportedly shoot and take place in Italy, and Ezio is the franchise's only Italian protagonist so far. Ezio's story covers well-trod ground on TV, though, as it inserts him into the drama with the Borgias at the turn of the 16th century. Essentially, it would be the same story as the Showtime series The Borgias, but with bonus ancient aliens and secret societies. Those are pretty significant wrinkles, of course.

How to get the Assassin's Creed video games

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