Assassin’s Creed is coming to Netflix, and it needs one thing to survive.
Assassin’s Creed is a major science fiction and action-adventure video game franchise. It follows the war between the Assassins and the Templars. The games take place in different eras that span from ancient times to the modern day. The franchise has also inspired a live-action film of the same name in 2016, and now, Netflix is adapting the popular title into a TV series.
Netflix’s upcoming live-action adaptation of the Assassin’s Creed video games has a lot of promise. However, according to one of the franchise's original stars, Abubakar Salim, the upcoming show's success may depend on something that is surprisingly straightforward and seemingly obvious.
Salim portrayed Bayek in the critically acclaimed video game Assassin's Creed Origins. The actor's incredible performance helped make Origins one of the most popular entries in the long-running franchise. In an interview with ScreenRant's Liam Crowley, Salim shared his thoughts on what the Netflix live-action reboot needs to do in order to succeed.
Salim explained that Assassin’s Creed already provides the streaming platform with more than enough content to create a good TV series. However, he believes that rather than reinventing and deviating too far away from the source material, the creative team should focus on preserving the elements that made the games popular with the franchise's original fans, the gamers.
According to the actor, staying true to the historical settings and the main storylines in the Assassin's Creed games is crucial. Of course, he doesn't expect a frame-by-frame remake, but staying true to those aspects is important. He said that these elements should remain at the core of any adaptation, especially given the series’ long history and dedicated following.
You just have to think of the community that brought it to life in the first place. You have to give them what they loved at the beginning. When it comes to storytelling, especially in the TV medium, it's very different from games. However, especially with something like Assassin's Creed, where it's had so many years in the game space, you have to listen to the fans there in regards to really paying service and homage to it, because it's one of those where it's so easy to try and innovate on it when it doesn't really need innovation. It just needs its core, which is the creed itself, the historical elements of it, and the core modern-day stuff as well. I think actually more so with the past stuff, with being the assassin in the past, that's the historical aspect of it, which is really, really cool. So as long as they can respect that and do it really well and do justice there, I think we're laughing. But yeah, we'll see.
Salim also stressed the importance of listening to the gaming community that has been faithful to IP for nearly two decades. In his opinion, these fans have invested countless hours exploring the world of Assassin’s Creed and its characters, making their attachment to the material is something that Netflix should take into consideration for its adaptation. Rather than making drastic changes or attempting to modernize ideas that already work, he believes the series should focus on delivering an accurate adaptation that stays true to the spirit of the games.
They live in this stuff, they breathe this stuff. So get them hyped, get them excited, but also tell a really good story. It's so hard. That's why the TV space works so well. I think because in the games as well, you're spending hours upon hours upon hours with these characters. In TV, you're spending hours upon hours upon hours of these characters as well, and that's why it works. And I think it gives it time and room to breathe rather than trying to rush things.
There is no official release date for Netflix's Assassin’s Creed TV series at the time of this article's publication. However, it has been speculated that the show will release in late 2026 or early 2027.
