Netflix's Assassin's Creed series heads to Ancient Rome in 64 AD

Netflix’s Assassin’s Creed series has found the setting that could make the franchise’s long-rumored Roman chapter feel built for live action: Ancient Rome in 64 AD, the year the Great Fire tore through the city and destroyed roughly two-thirds of it. The show is the first series developed under Netflix and Ubisoft’s 2020 content deal, and it arrives with a premise that leans straight into the franchise’s appetite for conspiracy, power struggles, and catastrophe.

That choice matters because Assassin’s Creed has visited some of gaming’s biggest historical touchstones, from ancient Egypt and ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy, feudal Japan, and revolutionary France, but Ancient Rome has never been used as a main game setting. For a community that has spent years imagining an Assassin’s Creed built around the empire at its most volatile, 64 AD is a sharp fit: it gives the series a built-in political inferno, a public disaster, and a backdrop that can fuel the secret war between the Templar Order and the Assassin Brotherhood without having to bend history to justify the drama.

Ubisoft has described the project as a high-octane thriller, and it will tell an original story rather than adapt one specific game plot. Roberto Patino and David Wiener are serving as co-showrunners and executive producers, while Johan Renck is reported to direct. Production began in Rome, Italy, with filming centered at Cinecittà Studios, a choice that grounds the adaptation in the city it is portraying rather than recreating it entirely on a backlot elsewhere.

The cast already stretches across a sizable ensemble: Lola Petticrew, Toby Wallace, Zachary Hart, Laura Marcus, Tanzyn Crawford, Nabhaan Rizwan, Claes Bang, Noomi Rapace, Ramzy Bedia, Sean Harris, Corrado Invernizzi, Sandra Guldberg-Kampp, Youssef Kerkour, Mirren Mack, and Louis McCartney are all attached. Netflix and Ubisoft had first announced their agreement on October 27, 2020, saying the first project would be an epic, genre-bending live-action adaptation, with additional animated and anime projects also planned.

The timing also underscores why Ubisoft keeps pushing Assassin’s Creed across media. In its FY2025-26 results, the publisher said the franchise had an annual audience above 30 million unique active players, a reminder that this is still one of its most important brands. Ancient Rome may be the setting fans have wanted in the games, but with Rome burning in 64 AD, Netflix now has a canvas that can turn that long-requested dream into a very different kind of Assassin’s Creed story.