Is it possible for a DM to make characters and asign them to players?

I did a search for this but couldn't find anything useful. 

I want to run a short series of sessions where the players in my world assume different PC's that I will make.  It would be sort of like a flashback to another section or time in the world where they would become pivotal NPC's of that time or place.  Is it possible to assign premade characters to my players or do I need to give them the basics of the PC and let them detail it as if they were making a new character?

Thx

You can't assign characters to players, but you can create unassigned characters for them to claim

I have done this before. I created a campaign, then made several characters within the campaign and then unassigned each of them. When my players joined the campaign they had the option of claiming one of the characters I made from the join link.