Adi Shankar On Latest Animated Series And Why Hollywood Needs Change
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I'm making American animation fucking cool. That's what I'm doing.
-Adi Shankar
When it comes to animation, people have opinions, and some people have strong opinions about what they would like to change about animation in Hollywood. One of those people is Adi Shankar, the producer of darker, more adult animation for Netflix based on popular video games such as Devil May Cry (2025) and Castlevania (2017-2021), Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix (2023). Upcoming projects include Assassin's Creed, Hyper Light Drifter, and PUBG. Shankar also recently acquired the rights to Duke Nukem. Shankar has also previously produced some big screen films with big names like Liam Neeson (The Grey) and Mark Wahlberg.
Shankar’s dreams for Hollywood started with his love for Saturday morning cartoons, which produced a series of unofficial short films based on staples such as The Punisher: Dirty Laundry (2012), Venom: Truth in Journalism (2013), and Power/Rangers (2015). He refers to these early efforts as “The Bootleg Universe.” He wants to continue producing similar animated films to revolutionize the animation industry in Hollywood by making animation something that people view as “cool” instead of merely being something for kids.
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"I'm trying to make animation cool in the way hip-hop became cool. The way Kanye changed fashion. The way Virgil Abloh changed luxury. I don't think it's definable. Hyper-commercialism—things designed to sell toys—that's Western animation. Hanna-Barbera is cute, but it's not cool. Anime is cool. I watched this transition happen, where it was geeky and all of a sudden Travis Scott is talking about Dragon Ball. I'm trying to do that for America. Why is Japanese animation cool? Why is an NFL athlete doing a Dragon Ball dance? Where's the American influence? American animation is stuck in kidland."
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Source(s): Esquire
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