The ‘John Wick’ creator opens up about his first animated project for Netflix and Ubisoft, reflecting on how the medium’s creative freedom and collaboration is quite different from live-action.
Known for creating , , and , writer-producer Derek Kolstad has turned his sights to animation with Netflix and Ubisoft’s , which debuted October 14.The action-adventure series, just picked up for Season 2, marks the first adaptation of the acclaimed stealth video game franchise It follows agent Sam Fisher as he is drawn back into the field to assist a wounded young operative.Liev Schreiber stars as Sam Fisher, alongside Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Zinnia Mckenna.
Guillaume Dousse and Félicien Colmet-Daage co-direct.The series is produced by Ubisoft, with Kolstad, Helene Juguet, and Hugo Revon executive producing alongside Gerard Guillemot for Ubisoft Film & Television.Sun Creature and Fost are the animation studios.
In a conversation with AWN, he shares why he embraced animation for the first time, how the medium challenges his storytelling instincts, and what he’s learned from the long production journey of translating stealth, action, and moral ambiguity into an animated world.Dan Sarto: Derek Kolstad: Ubisoft and Netflix came to me with the project as an animated property — that was their intent from the start.Up to that point I hadn’t done anything in animation, and I look at creativity as a landscape: if I haven’t done it, I’m going to try it.
I’m developing a board game, a video game, and a card game.It’s not about branching out for its own sake; it’s about learning and hanging out with new creatives.And it’s as intimidating as shit because it’s hard enough to go from my first love, movies, to TV and then to video games and comic books, let alone then to animation.
Each requires a bit of a perspective shift.It’s intimidating because every medium requires a perspective shift.You can’t do everything in animation; things still cost time and effort.
But I look back to my favorite anime — my first was — and there’s a lot of that character in Hutch [from ] and in .I’ve always been a Tom Clancy fan, even though I was terrible at because all the games I’d been playing up to that point were running into a room and shooting.I loved the idea of the challenge.
When they offered it, there was no story yet, and I just wanted to do the version — don’t touch canon, just allude to it, come at it from a new angle, see where Sam Fisher is now, and let me run with it.Animation takes forever — its two years after you turn in the script before you see animatics — but when it finally comes to life you just go, “Holy shit!” DS: DK: Totally.I met the creators of [Michel Green and Amber Noizumi], and one thing we agreed on is that in action, movement is part of the hero’s journey.
If the hero learns from each fight, you’re watching growth.Whether it’s Jet Li, Indiana Jones, or Bond, you recognize character in the way they move.In a Jet Li movie, when the bad guy does a move that puts him on his ass, when the bad guy tries it again, that's his downfall because Jet learned from it.
Even though Sam Fisher lives in a morally gray world, you still like him — you root for him.People call John Wick an anti-hero; I never have.He’s my hero in that moment.
What matters is a moral compass and genuine collaboration.If you still find yourself grinning and excited about an idea, you’re doing it right.DS: DK: One big difference is that animation isn’t WGA.
At a certain point you turn in your scripts and say, “Go with God.” You have to trust your partners.There are more voices — more cooks in the kitchen — and more elements at play.On set in live-action, everyone’s right there; in animation, once the writers’ room is done it’s like turning in an essay and waiting to see if you did well.
That said, I’ve learned to let go a bit.Control just means staying attached as the project moves forward, not being the smartest person in the room.But there are a lot more elements at play, so there are a lot more voices.
More cooks in the kitchen.DS: DK: In my writers’ room we comp everything — movies, TV, games.When I write action sequences, I treat them like three-act structures: the first act is detailed, the second act is very 10,000 feet, and the third, a culmination.
For Sam on the farm, I wanted simplicity — almost Jason Voorhees by way of Jason Bourne.Then you see him on the bike, and that’s me turning to the director: “What do you want to do here?” Hearing their excitement amped me up.Some scenes had multiple layers — no rotoscope, maybe motion capture — but when you watch it, you forget technique and just think, “This is cool.” DS: DK: Building out the production machine was mainly Netflix and Ubisoft’s doing.
But I was involved in the discussions.The European look you mention goes back to history — the Cold War, the Iron Curtain — Eastern and Western European styles clashing and influencing each other.And it leaks into the animation.
You’ll see a character where you’re like, “Dude, he looks like a KGB agent from 1961.” It’s funny how history comes into play.What I loved was how those teams approached it like our writers’ room: if an idea made the show 3% better, even if it added a hundred hours of work, it was worth it.Sometimes we had to scrap and rebuild, but we got there.
I also loved their willingness to use space — to let a shot breathe.Like , you can have these haunting moments of nothingness with an establishing shot that make the world feel real.DS: DK: Some of the worst deaths in cinema have happened offscreen.
In this show they actually showed more than I expected — it’s more violent — but I’ve learned restraint.My wife’s my first reader; sometimes she’ll hand me the iPad and say, “Read this out loud,” and I realize, “Oh no, that’s too much.” I think of — yes, it’s violent, but it’s stylized action.It’s action violence.
As a kid watching ’80s movies, everyone had one horror kill, like someone getting sucked into a jet engine.You have to be careful not to lose the audience.In animation, the visceral impact can be stronger because of frame rate, motion, and detail.
It’s not about censoring — it’s about balance.The best violence gets lost inside the word .You’re enjoying the rhythm, not looking away, or flinching from it.
Look all the way back to .When Errol Flynn stabs Basil Rothbone, there’s no blood.But it was a great visceral kill without any violence.
DS: DK: Exactly.In live-action, if one director handles every episode, sometimes all the characters start sounding the same.If it’s a different director each week, it’s a roll of the dice.
The best shows, like , have a rule book and guardrails — freedom within structure.That’s what we aimed for here.DS: DK: In animation, because of how the machine works, there are so many people involved that I just open the doors.
Be transparent, make sure everyone’s onboard at every step — concept, episodes, scripts.You can’t be secretive.What I loved most was giving four writers their first jobs.
That meant a lot to me.They’ve gone on to other things because of the work they did here.I didn’t get here alone, and helping new writers find their footing feels great.
My first love will always be live-action, but animation lets you do things audiences will accept here but not in live-action — those surreal, heightened moments.It’s a ton of work, though.You turn in the script, wait years, and then suddenly it’s real.
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
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