‘John Wick’ Creator Derek Kolstad on Screenwriting, Bob Odenkirk & Camp Pendleton

Derek Kolstad refers to his Hollywood rise as an “overnight success” that took 15 years to achieve.

The acclaimed screenwriter known for writing and creating the popular film series John Wick starring Keanu Reeves, and more recently the Nobody movies starring Bob Odenkirk, spoke with Military.com on how he navigated a turbulent entertainment industry to ultimately reach his goals.

A recent press tour as part of the latest film he wrote, NORMAL, also starring Odenkirk, led to an April 24 USO visit with Marines at Camp Pendleton. Kolstad mentioned how the military affected his upbringing and why giving time to those who continually defend our nation is a small token of gratitude.

Camp Pendleton, located in California’s San Diego County near Oceanside, is the Marine Corps’ major West Coast base and one of the largest bases nationwide. For Kolstad, a Midwestern guy from Wisconsin, the recent visit to what he described as a huge city was “surreal.”

“Pendleton is just a frickin’ huge city, like a town,” Kolstad told Military.com. “I come from a military family, all of my uncles. My one grandfather had to stay on the farm, the other went to the Navy. So, it was always in the shadow of that.

“Just the energy there [at Camp Pendelton], and the joy and camaraderie and charisma. We’ve been trying to do more and more of this, and now that we’ve we’ve done it in such a way that even the day of we’re being welcomed back…it just harkens back to my youth. It was a joy.”

Kolstad and Odenkirk even gave service members a treat by screening NORMAL ahead of its digital release date on May 19.

Sleeping on Floors, Selling Screenplays

Getting to work alongside stars like Odenkirk and Reeves involved a long road for Kolstad that always came back to one thing: his passion for prose.

When he left the Heartland and headed to Los Angeles in his mid-20’s, attempting to strike on a dream, reality set in. He spent some two years sleeping on floors and couches while he sought his big break.

As he was “picking up gigs wherever I could,” his wife, Sonja, had the “real job” and was paying the bills.

“It’s tough because [writing screenplays is] a job that a lot of people want,” Kolstad said. “It’s a job that’s incredibly hard to get the first one.”

His first job entailed doing a rewrite of a direct-to-DVD movie and being paid out of the catering budget. Even with the optics, he thought of it at the time as a “huge win” because that $2,000 covered a couple of months’ rent.

Then, the next gig followed the same pattern. When that so-called big break didn’t arrive, he questioned whether he was trending upwards or still inert.

“But I kept writing, because I had to,” he said. “Even on Friday nights when people would go out and hit up the bar, hit the club, hit up a restaurant, I’d stay in. I’d have my glass of wine by the computer and just keep writing and keep emailing and keep trying.

“Because the hardest part about this job is finding the work. Most of the time your work is finding the work.”

‘John Wick’ and Building on That Success

One script he wrote in the early 2010s was for a film he wrote called The Acolyte. Shortly thereafter, he penned a script for a movie called The Package that starred Dolph Lundgren.

It wasn’t until he was pushing 40 years of age in 2013 that Kolstad’s life was about to change. He sold a script for a project with the working title Scorn, which was later changed to John Wick in honor of Kolstad’s grandfather.

“I was a huge Bill and Ted fan and Point Break, and then, of course, The Matrix and Constantine, all that kind of stuff,” Kolstad said.

One Friday morning, he received a call instructing him to meet Reeves at his home.

“He is as cool as you’ve heard,” he said. “Nice, laid back. You know, he’s actually pretty tall.”

Kolstad instantly noticed multiple screenplays on a nearby table, indicating a passion for reading and stories.

The pair ended up spending about every weekend for two months going over the script, until finally Reeves said he agreed to play the main role—which caught Kolstad off guard considering he thought Reeves had already signed on.

Kolstad recalled feeling “starstruck,” adding, “I think that’s part of the Midwestern in me.”

“In one respect, I guess you could say [it was] validation,” he said. “But to be honest, I just want to do cool stuff with cool people. That’s always been the way I’ve looked at life. And here is this thing I get to do with a cool person, you know?”

But once John Wick took off and became bigger than originally imagined, it set a higher bar for Kolstad.

“When John Wick hit, it’s a different kind of fear on both sides because it’s kind of like, can I do it again?” he said. “Or, was this just a drop in the pan, that kind of thing. And ultimately, John Wick 2 is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Working with Bob Odenkirk

Kolstad said that his relationship with Bob Odenkirk has blossomed, providing confidence to the longtime screenwriter when others in the industry wondered if he could follow up on the box office success of John Wick.

“Nobody is the one that really cracked everyone open because then it was, ‘Hey, he can do that again,’” Kolstad said.

But Odenkirk wasn’t the first person to come to Kolstad’s mind when writing Nobody, the critically-acclaimed project that was released in March 2021 and grossed $57 million on a $16 million budget.

A producer actually got in touch with Kolstad about the willingness of Odenkirk to want to play a role as an action star, which was rather unorthodox considering a more comedic and dramatic acting background in shows like Mr. Show with Bob and David and Better Call Saul.

“[Odenkirk] wanted to play it straight,” Kolstad said. “You’re always going to have a bit of comedy with him, but he wanted to play it straight. And so when we met, we just clicked.

“He told me some stories about his life and why he wanted to do this. I went home and spent a good week or two, based on just our general meeting, coming up with nobody. I sent it to him and it was a treatment, and we refined it. And then we ended up going around Hollywood to pitch it.”

But some Hollywood producers said Odenkirk would be better fit as a producer rather than the film’s star. A pitch to Universal was the ticket that punched the movie’s creation and, ultimately, a broader relationship between Kolstad and Odenkirk.

“I can’t speak kindly enough of Bob,” Kolstad said. “As just a personal-professional relationship…he’s a joy, man.”

The way NORMAL developed into the latest feature film was sort of by happenstance. While on the set of Nobody, Kolstad was working on a 12-page basic script for a new project at the time dubbed The Interim.

But the project kind of fell by the wayside due to busy schedules combined with the Hollywood writers’ strike. However, Odenkirk never forgot about it and one day asked Kolstad whether that script about a small-town Minnesota sheriff ever turned into anything.

“I sent him the treatment,” Kolstad said. “We ripped it apart, rebuilt it. And then when the strike was over, I went out and inspected. And we were like, ‘Do you want to just set it up at a studio or do the international presales?’

“And since we hadn’t done it that way, that’s how it came to play. Ultimately, we landed at Magnolia. Everyone’s ecstatic with how this thing’s rolling out.”

Asked whether another installment of John Wick is in the works, Kolstad played coy.

“I can neither confirm nor deny yet,” he said.