Ubisoft may not be ready to bring Sam Fisher back to the world of video games, but Netflix is keen on making him the star of a new Splinter Cell anime series. Based on the series of stealth action games by Ubisoft and endorsed by late military fiction author Tom Clancy, the new anime is poised to explore a secret world of espionage, government conspiracies, and terrorist plots.
The news comes from Variety, which also reports that John Wick and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier writer Derek Kolstad will pen the script and serve as executive producer. According to the outlet, Netflix has picked up Splinter Cell for a two-season, 16-episode order.
There are no details regarding the plot or characters of the new series at the moment and production sounds far off, so you probably shouldn’t expect to see the anime on Netflix for a while. When the show does arrive, it’ll be the first new entry in the Splinter Cell franchise since 2013. Sam Fisher’s last outing was in the game Splinter Cell: Blacklist and its tie-in novel. There have been rumors of a new Splinter Cell project at Ubisoft for years but nothing has been officially announced. This had left some fans of the series to wonder whether they would ever see Sam on screen again.
In case you need a refresher, Sam Fisher is a member of Third Echelon, a top-secret black ops unit within the NSA tasked with taking down terrorist organizations. The games, which emphasize stealth over shooter action, see Sam deploy all kinds of stealth tactics, including plenty of cool spy gadgets, in order to complete his missions. Later installments turned Sam into a double agent (he was working undercover), which eventually put him at odds with Third Echelon in the Splinter Cell: Conviction, a game Sam spends largely on the run from government agents while working to root out a plot against the president. Blacklist, which sees Sam create a new black ops division called Fourth Echelon, was a return to the status quo, so to speak.
A Splinter Cell movie was previously been in the works and Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road) was attached to star as Sam but the wheels never really turned on the project. It’s considered in development hell at this point.
This is just the latest video game adaptation coming to Netflix. After the Castlevania anime series became a hit for the streaming service, the streamer quickly set to adapt other popular franchises such as The Witcher and Devil May Cry. Recently, an Activision Blizzard exec let slip that Overwatch and Diablo animated series are also in the works, potentially at Netflix.
More on the Splinter Cell anime series as we learn it.