While 2016’s Assassin’s Creed film was met with mixed-to-negative reviews, video game publisher Ubisoft is not giving up on turning one of their prized video game franchises into something bigger.
Adi Shankar, showrunner for Netflix’s upcoming animated series, Castlevania, is now developing an anime series based on the game. The series will reportedly be set “within the deep lore of the Assassin’s Creed universe”, and fans of the game will be excited to hear that Shankar is a huge gamer himself and fan of the series.
After the failure of the film adaptation at the hands of executives stuck within the traditional Hollywood machine, Ubisoft is turning to a genuine fan to help them adapt their material for an even wider audience. Shankar has executively produced such films as The Grey, Dredd and Lone Survivor, all of which share the kind of gritty, violent aesthetic an Assassin’s Creed series is pining for.
On Shankar’s own Facebook page, his announcement briefly brushed over his love of the game and his excitement at earning this opportunity:
“I’m happy to let you guys know that I’ve selected my next project! I played the first edition of Assassin’s Creed the year I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my dream.
At that moment I knew absolutely no one in the industry and could never have imagined that one day Ubisoft would ask me to take the world of Assassin’s Creed and create an original story set in it as an anime series. If anyone tells you not to follow your passion in life they are wrong”.
It’s great news for fervent fans of the game. The live-action setting in the film wasn’t quite able to express the nuances of the game too well, but an anime series should lead to a pretty pure adaptation of the world that fans fell in love with. That it’s being made by a true fan of the game himself is just icing on the cake.
Shankar’s Castlevania debuts on Netflix this Friday, July 7.
#Peace.Love.AssassinsCreed
