As part of its upfront presentations detailing the shows it will broadcast during the 2008-2009 season, NBC announced that it will air XIII: The Conspiracy, a mini-series starring Steven Dorff and Val Kilmer that is based on the hugely popular (in Europe) series of XIII graphic novels written by Jan Van Hamme and illustrated by William Vance. 

In the U.S. the property is better known because of Ubisoft's first person shooter game XIII, which has been released for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox 360, Mac and PC, and which is closely based on the first five XIII graphic novels.  Catalan Communications was the first American company to publish XIII, while Marvel is the most recent, having published the first volume in the series in 2007.

XIII is the Ludlumesque saga of an amnesiac assassin who washes up on the beach on the East Coast of the U.S. wearing only a "XIII" tattoo.   The highly trained hero has to piece together the story of his life and gradually learns that he is embroiled in a conspiracy to assassinate the president of the U.S. as part of a coup d'etat.  In the mini-series Dorff plays XIII, while Kilmer portrays the Mongoose, a hired killer charged with eliminating loose ends by rubbing out XIII.  The mini-series updates the saga somewhat by making the President of the U.S. a woman.

While XIII owes an obvious debt to Ludlum's Bourne novels, NBC's other new miniseries, The Last Templar, looks like an attempt to create something similar to The DaVinci Code.