Delighted Splinter Cell fans were shown a trio of clips from the upcoming animated Deathwatch series today at Annecy as Ubisoft execs gave them a peek into the making of the highly-anticipated Netflix adaptation.
The audience at a packed Salle Pierre Lamy were shown three clips featuring the first appearance of protagonist Sam Fisher, voiced by Liev Schreiber, an epic fight scene and a car chase.
The creative team talked the crowd through the various influences that have had such an impact on the TV version, which fast forwards Fisher’s story to 2025. One of Ubisoft’s flagship franchises, the hugely popular game series follows Fisher, the highly trained agent of a fictional black-ops sub-division within the NSA, dubbed “Third Echelon”, as he overcomes his adversaries. Having first been announced in 2020, the Ubisoft series will air later this year on Netflix.
Director Guillaume Dousse said he approached the immense task of helming an adaptation of one of the world’s most beloved video games by melding Michael Mann and Japanese director-animator Satoshi Kon. Live action noir properties like Ghost in the Shell were also a major influence, he added.
“We took huge inspiration from live action,” he said. “There is this element of melancholy to the mise en scène. We wanted it to be full of contrasts.”
Dousse incorporated lengthier, fixed shots, a rarity for animation, as he cited the famous 17-minute scene in Steve McQueen’s Hunger as an example of something he wanted to move towards. The creatives repeatedly stressed that the eight-episode show takes its time, going against the grain of super fast-paced narratives. The soundtrack was also hugely important, with Dousse citing inspirations like Ozark and Tokyo Vice.
Another slightly more unlikely inspiration for the older central character was Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible franchise, who has been making those movies for decades and has grown up with them.
“It was interesting to have this ageing character, not totally like the Tom Cruise version but more realistic, and more weathered by life,” said producer Hugo Revon.
Notably, Schreiber is taking on voice duties from Michael Ironside. Ironside, who voiced Fisher in the games, has previously said he is too old to return for the show.
Schreiber was “important for the project” as he is known for live action and the show is aiming to attract a broad audience who simply enjoy a great narrative, Revon said. “His voice comes to life,” he added of the Ray Donovan star. “It is so natural.”
The show brings the action to Europe and was described as a “roadtrip around Europe” by Ubisoft development manager Carl Tamakloe.
Fast forwarding to 2025 meant facing up to the realities of how war has changed since Splinter Cell first started out as a game.
“We were interested in hybrid warfare,” added Tamakloe. “Fake news can destabilize a state. We wanted to be rooted in the idea that in 2025 you don’t fight like you did in 2000.”
Without giving too much away, Tamakloe revealed some of the show will be set around the fictional Cop 31 climate conference, drawing out themes of energy and power.
The first Splinter Cell video game was released in 2002. A series of tie-in novels following Fisher on his missions as a black ops agent were published in the mid-2000s.
The team were speaking on the first day of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the south of France, which is being attended by all the big American studios.
