Whether you pick up a controller or not, video games have become one of the biggest forms of entertainment. Over the past few years, some of the biggest titles in the gaming industry have received the Hollywood treatment, with movies and shows like A Minecraft Movie and The Last of Us becoming major hits. Another video game adaptation has just joined the roster following two decades of development hell.
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Video game fans can now stream the long-awaited and first-ever screen adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell video game franchise. On October 13th, Netflix’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch premiered. The animated series is based on the video game series of the same name, which has released eight entries between 2002 and 2013. Liev Schreiber stars as the voice of Sam Fisher, a legendary agent drawn back into the field when a wounded young operative seeks out his help.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Adaptation Was a Long Time Coming
Bringing an adaptation of Clancy’s beloved stealth games to the screen was a long time coming – two decades to be exact. A live-action Splinter Cell film adaptation was first confirmed to be in development as early as 2005, and the ball got rolling on the project just a few years later in 2012 when Tom Hardy was cast as Sam Fisher and Eric Warren Singer was brought on to pen the project. By 2014, Edge of Tomorrow’s Doug Liman was attached to the project as director. But the Splinter Cell movie stalled there and remained in development hell for a full decade, with several behind-the-scenes shakeups, including Liman stepping down as director, taking place before it was announced in 2024 that the movie was canceled. Producer Basil Iwanyk cited script and budget concerns as the reason for the ill-fated project, which he described as “one of the ones that got away.”
That wasn’t the end for a Splinter Cell adaptation, though. Just a few years earlier, in 2020, Netflix announced that it was also looking to bring Clancy’s iconic video game IP to the screen in an animated series. That long-in-the-works show fit perfectly into the streamer’s existing and incredibly successful catalog of animated video game adaptations, which also includes Castlevania and Arcane, the streamer making a name for itself with a consistent record of high-quality and critically acclaimed video game adaptations.
Other New TV Shows Now on Netflix
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is one of the latest TV titles to hit Netflix. October has seen the streamer stock a few TV favorites in its library, including another video game adaptation: Halo. The first and only two seasons of Paramount’s live-action adaptation of the military science fiction video game series of the same name started streaming on October 1st alongside NCIS Seasons 18 and 19 and The Way Home Seasons 1 and 2. Other series now streaming include all seven seasons of Nurse Jackie, the original docuseries True Haunting, and Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
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