American Assassin may have tanked at the box office in 2017, but the spy film is finding success on Netflix, landing the top spot on the streamer’s Top 10 movies in the U.S. Find out whether the thriller based on real-life events — and if a second movie is in the works to continue the franchise.

Directed by Michael Cuesta, American Assassin stars Dylan O’Brien, a CIA black ops recruit who loses his fiancée in a terrorist attack and ultimately collaborates with Cold War vet (Michael Keaton) to stop a potential world war in the Middle East. Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, and Taylor Kitsch also star in the action-packed film.

American Assassin premiered in theaters in September 2017 but flopped at the box office. The film grossed $67 million worldwide on a budget of about $33 million, according to Box Office Mojo. American Assassin was also slammed by critics — earning a low 34% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

O’Brien took on the role of Rapp after suffering life-threatening facial fractures and body lacerations from a stunt in The Maze Runner: The Death Cure. “I started filming seven months after the accident. I wasn’t allowed to do anything for three months. Then about a month after that, I had to start early training. I had a lot of limitations at that point still. It was just breathing and stretching stuff, just getting back on my feet at first,” the former Teen Wolf star told MovieWeb.

He continued, “Then we were able to ramp up the training once it got to the fifth and sixth month removed from surgery. I was able to do more strenuous stuff. But mentally, man, that was the biggest battle.”

Is American Assassin Based On A True Story?

No, the 2017 film American Assassin starring Dylan O’Brien and Michael Keaton is not based on a true story. The movie is based on a book of the same name by Vince Flynn, who has authored a series of books about the counter-terrorism operative.

Flynn passed away in 2013, and the American Assassin books were taken over by Kyle Mills until 2023. In 2024, it was announced that Don Bentley will continue the series, and the 23rd book is slated to hit shelves on September 10, 2024.

O’Brien admitted that he wasn’t familiar with Vince Flynn’s books and Mitch Rapp before joining American Assassin. “The first thing I read was the script when it got sent to me. I liked it, felt connected to it. I then learned about the books, that there were fifteen of them at the time,” he revealed. “This was the eleventh book. But no, I was not aware of the books before this got sent to me.”

However, there are a few major differences between the film and the book to note, according to screenwriter Stephen Schiff. “There’s no bomb in the book. There’s no character like Ghost in the book. Most of what’s in the movie is not in the book,” Schiff explained to The Hollywood Reporter in 2017.

Additionally, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing (the tragedy that motivates Mitch in the books) was updated to the film’s opening terrorist attack on the beach.

“We weren’t going to go back to [the Lockerbie disaster] so I had to really create something contemporary that would be as huge and as terrible, which I think the movie conveys,” Schiff added.

Will There Be An American Assassin 2?

The second American Assassin film never came to fruition, likely because of the commercial upset from the first film, thus halting overall franchise plans. O’Brien previously told MovieWeb that he signed up for multiple films of American Assassin “if we keep going.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

As of 2024, there are no plans to continue with another film — although American Assassin’s success on Netflix could always change things. Stay tuned to learn more.

Watch the trailer for American Assassin below.

American Assassin is streaming on Netflix.