Everybody involved in John Wick continues to be highly in demand. Co-director Chad Stahelski has announced multiple projects, including adaptations of Sandman Slim and comic Kill Or Be Killed.
Co-director David Leitch has helmed Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, and even Keanu Reeves used the franchise to escape a slump and help get a fourth Matrix film greenlit.
So it’s no surprise that another John Wick alumni is getting involved in another major project. Derek Kolstad, who has helped write all three films and recently signed on to helm the Just Cause video game adaptation, is set to adapt another video game. He will write a Splinter Cell animated series for Netflix and Ubisoft.
Per Variety, the series has already received a two-season, 16-episode order, but that’s pretty much all we know right now.
The Splinter Cell game was first released back in 2002, receiving plenty of acclaim. The story follows former U.S. Navy SEAL Sam Fisher, who is recruited by the NSA to work for the agency’s mysterious Third Echelon division, where he must survive a number of black ops missions requiring deadly tactics. The original game spawned six sequels and series of a tie-in novels.
If some of this sounds familiar to non-gamers, that’s because Hollywood has been trying to make a Splinter Cell adaptation for years. Tom Hardy was even signed on to play Fisher back in 2012, but the project never got off the ground and is now dead.
Ubisoft reportedly decided to go the route of an animated series instead, due to the success of Castlevania – another successful Netflix video game adaptation – and probably due to film adaptations such as Assassin’s Creed, which didn’t perform well and maybe even harmed the brand in the process.
There’s not much to go on here, but Splinter Cell has always seemed like a game ripe for some sort of adaptation. An animated series at Netflix sounds like a pretty good recipe for success.
#Peace.Love.SplinterCell
