Producer Adi Shankar is known for his bloody and hard-hitting Bootleg Universe including The Punisher: Dirty Laundry and Power/Rangers and his work in Dredd starring Karl Urban as an executive producer. His love of video games has translated into the realm of animation with Netflix’s Castlevania, in which he served as the showrunner and executive producer. This year, Shankar is preparing for the release of Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, a Netflix animated series based on Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.

The series is set in 1992 in Eden, a country formerly known as the USA. It’s now a technocracy filled with propaganda and corruption, and super-soldier Dolph Laserhawk was betrayed and locked up in Eden’s top security prison Supermaxx. It’s there where he meets a band of misfits and is forced to lead them on a mission à la Suicide Squad. Video game fans will be in for a treat as it features plenty of video game references like Metal Gear and Ubisoft franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Beyond Good & Evil.

During Ubisoft Forward, Adi Shankar wore a cyberpunk-inspired outfit complete with futuristic LED visors and stepped on the stage to share the teaser for Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix. The reveal was part of Ubisoft’s event that showcased its upcoming AAA projects including Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Star Wars Outlaws, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Nerd Reactor had the chance to sit down and chat with Shankar about the event and his upcoming animated show on Netflix.

Nerd Reactor: What were your thoughts on Ubisoft Forward? Any favorites?

Adi Shankar: First of all, Knights of the Old Republic is awesome. And then you get a lot of Star Wars games that just feel like games. Outlaws feels like stepping back into the Star Wars universe the way the Old Republic did, right?

I don’t talk about The Crew a lot. I don’t know why but it’s cool. I mean, look, there’s a freaking Lamborghini right there. [He points to an actual Lamborghini inside the Ubisoft Forward venue.] That’s awesome, right? I like The Crew. Alex Taylor from our show is from The Crew.

I guess Ubisoft’s relationship with Avatar as a brand goes way, way back. But you know, I think Avatar’s such a rich world that is a natural fit for gaming. That’s really cool. It’s hard to pick one and go, “Boom! This is it for me.”

That’s why Captain Laserhawk is a perfect fit. There are so many different video game influences in there. Retro stuff, music, even the art style. What was it like trying to just go out there being crazy and not have to worry about trying to tone things down?

I have to give massive props to Bobbypills because so much of this is their direction. I mean these guys, they’re real filmmakers. I’m not trying to knock animators, because that’s an art form as well. These guys bring a point of view to every shot, right? So, you can have something conceptually crazy on the page, they figure out how to make it work and make it better, like for everything. It’s like the writing is scripted and then having David Fincher shoot it. You’re going to look like you knocked it out of the park when they did.

The show features retro pixel animation. Can you tell us about that art process?

That was boarded into the process. It was boarded in the animatic. Bobbypills had to just do it. But what I think was cool conceptually when I was like, “Hey we should do this mixed media thing.” But they got it instantaneously because we grew up in the same time period and had the same references. When you say using the language of video games, it doesn’t mean just one thing. There’s a stealth Metal Gear piece you see and then there’s also a platformer, and those are fundamentally different.

So when you mention Metal Gear, platformers, other inspirations – because this is a Ubisoft project – were they okay with it? Like, “Yeah, we can do that, and we can do that.”

Well, I mean just gaming is an inspiration. Just gaming in general. All games are inspirations for this universe. One of the great things about gaming is it’s a language that’s continuously evolving as time goes on. New technology comes out that now allows a different type of game. Then that new game develops a language, control set, and a template that carries forward into the next-gen, and then the next-gen, and the next-gen. It’s this ever-evolving language that we have the privilege of being born in – this time period of experiencing the birth of this language and the expansion of it.

I think I’ve heard some inspiration for retro wave. Is that it?

Yeah, yeah.

Let’s talk about that. There’s so much you can hear in just that whole freeway sequence in the first episode.

I’m a fan of synthwave, retro wave. It has 50 thousand names. Outrun. But I’m a fan of the genre. That is again a genre that was birthed basically because of the internet. It’s an art style that’s from the internet. It’s like if you know, you know. If you don’t know, you want to know kind of deal. And Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was one of the seminal pieces of that outrun/synthwave movement when it dropped in the earliest incarnation of it. But I feel when you look at the torch-bearers of the synthwave movement, it’s mainly bands like Power Glove, Oscillian, Nina, and Gunship.

The sound of synthwave is evolving. It’s evolving into ’90s wave. You’re like hearing it becoming more serious, and more metal…industrial metal inspired. It’s a joy to be able to play in the synthwave sandbox. And I know that fans of synthwave constantly want more synthwave. As a fan, I’m like, “Wait! Why aren’t there more synthwave stuff out there?”

The teaser shows a little bit of a different character that’s going to be in it like some Ubisoft characters. Everyone’s going to be asking you about the Assassin’s Creed bullfrog. You mentioned the idea of the bullfrog being cute while also being an assassin. Are we going to get other characters that have that fusion of something completely contrasting?

So, without confirming without spoiling anything, which I will be publicly flogged if I do – just kidding – but I don’t want to spoil it. Part of the show is playing with the unexpected while playing with contrast. It’s reimagining while staying true to the core essence of the thing that’s being reimagined.

Because this is like a childhood dream just seeing this in animation form – something from the past with retro gaming – but then also for mature audiences. What do you want the audience to take away from that?

I’ve given up on this idea of control. I gave up on it a long time ago because I realized, oh my gosh, you can control the controllable. The controllable is a very small box of what is controllable. I hope the audience loves the show. I acknowledge that 10 different people will have 10 different reactions, and there are 10 different facets of the show that they will connect with. For example, different Easter eggs, and different characters. This show just draws off of so much pop culture. What I hope is that you dig the show. The wanting part, it’s not in my control.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

About Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix

Adi Shankar voices Red from the Niji Six in the show, inspired by Rainbow Six Siege. “Balak” lends his voice as the sweet but deadly Assassin, Bullfrog, inspired by Assassin’s Creed. Dolph Laserhawk is voiced by Nathaniel Curtis (Witcher: Blood Origin, It’s A Sin), Mark Ebulue voices Marcus Holloway (Watch Dogs 2), and Boris Hiestand (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla) voices Alex.

Shankar (Castlevania, Devil May Cry) is the creator and executive producer of Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix. Helene Juguet, Hugo Revon, and Gerard Guillemot produce for Ubisoft Film & Television; and Bobbypills is the animation studio, with Mehdi Leffad serving as director of the show and “Balak” as the studio’s creative director.