John Wick’s Derek Kolstad is the showrunner for Netflix’s upcoming Splinter Cell animated series, Deathwatch, and now he’s shared new insight into the show, including how he believes you have to “rip the spine out of the source material.”
Speaking to IGN, Kolstad said it was important for Deathwatch to honor the Splinter Cell franchise but also not be too strict in needing to adhere to it. “You have to rip the spine out of the source material,” he said. “Keep the brain and the heart, entertain the soul, and do your best to actually build it into something that works.”
Deathwatch takes place decades after the stories of the original games, but Kolstad said he’s not sure if it’s officially canon. “I hope so. … [Ubisoft’s] got a stranglehold on their IP for good measure because they’ve got some of the best titles. But there were some things that along the way [they] were like, ‘Don’t do that.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ And they’re like, ‘Hey, we got other plans,'” he said.
Regarding those potential “other plans,” that could be a reference to many things, including the upcoming Splinter Cell remake.
Also in the interview, Kolstad addressed the fact that Deathwatch doesn’t bring back Michael Ironside–the voice actor of Sam Fisher in the games–for the series. Kolstad said he “loved” Ironside’s performance in the games, but the team wanted “a new sound” for the show. A number of actors expressed interest, he said, but Liev Schreiber ultimately won out.
Kolstad said he enjoyed Schreiber’s performance in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears (which itself is based on a Tom Clancy book), so much so that he believed he would be “perfect” for Sam Fisher.
“Say what you will about that movie, but Liev Schreiber as John Clark was perfect. And so when his name came up, it was looking through that lens of John Clark. It’s again, they’re both Clancy characters, they’re attached to the hip, same creator, same universe, and it just seemed perfect,” Kolstad said.
Deathwatch premieres on Netflix on October 14.
On the video game front, there is a Splinter Cell remake in development, but there haven’t been many updates about that game since it was announced in 2022. Earlier this year, Ubisoft added Steam achievements to Splinter Cell: Blacklist, which was released in 2013.