Make it Make Sense: Derek Kolstad Talks ‘Normal’

Screenwriter Derek Kolstad (John Wick 1-3, Ballerina, Nobody 1 & 2) has joined forces with his Nobody star Bob Odenkirk for inverted Western and hybrid actioner Normal. Set in the fictional town of Normal, Minnesota, the Fargo-esque wintery landscape is a perfect canvas for action. “I think there’s a shared notion about westerns of having either snow or sand. I love the idea that it’s man vs man vs God. God is nature. In this film, it’s the snowstorm that’s the act of nature. It’s a character in and of itself, alongside the environment, the town, and the townspeople,” says Kolstad. 

Derek had dreams of being a screenwriter at an early age. When he was eleven he wrote his first script “on a bunch of yellow note pads.” It took him a while to find his stride, but by his late 30s/early 40s, he finally found his writing groove with Keanu Reeves take-no-prisoners actioner John Wick (2014).  Prior to that, he entered the writing arena with guns blazing with One in the Chamber (2012) and The Package (2012). It’s a profession he really loves. “I’m a writer who loves to write and I’m blessed to have this job right now,” he recently told Script magazine.

He values working with friends and people he’s familiar with, there’s a comfort level and trust, but also welcomes working with new people. He appreciates “the challenges of new people, new stories, new genres and subgenres, and new physicalities in relation to what we can do in the action space. So, I’m up for the challenge, but I also like working with a good friend.”

Derek worked on Nobody 1 & 2 with comedian Bob Odenkirk and producer Marc Provissiero. They formed a close alliance. It was on the set of that film that Derek had the idea for Normal.

Derek Kolstad:  I wrote the first treatment, it was about twelve pages long. I write treatments quite a bit, then I just put them on the shelf. A couple of years later, when Bob and I both had a little bit of bandwidth, he said, ‘Loved Nobody. Let’s do it again. What else do you have?’ I sent him three paragraphs. Normal was originally titled The Interim. I’m terrible with titles…!

Sonya Alexander: No… you aren’t!

Derek: John Wick was originally Scorn..! That’s a terrible title!

Sonya: Well… [laughs]

Derek: I got together with Bob and we had the treatment. We blew up the first forty pages of the script. That’s why he joins me on the ‘story by’ credit. Once we figured it out, I went out to draft. Once we had a draft we were proud of, we thought to ourselves, ‘Do we go the studio route or do we do it independently?’  Since we’d never done anything like this independently, we thought we’d give it a try, but to do that, we needed a director. We Zoomed with a number of directors but it was Ben Wheatley, who I knew from Kill List and Free Fire, that caught our eye. I sent those movies to Bob and Marc. About thirty seconds into the Zoom with Ben, we just started texting, ‘This is our guy.’

Director Ben Wheatley (Meg 2: The Trench, Rebecca), after reading Normal, said it reminded him of an inverted High Noon. Derek, who’s no stranger to writing characters who are arbiters of judgement and justice, also has a video game sensibility to some of his projects. The fighting scenes and side quests in the John Wick franchise are tailor-made for video game play. Derek collaborated with Mike Bithell of Bithell Games on the John Wick Hex game and has developed Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell video game into the animated series Splinter Cell: Deathwatch. He knows how to successfully adjust a story from one medium to another.

Sonya: How would you define a ‘neo-Western’?

Derek: That is a Ben term and a Ben Wheatley question. [laughs] It’s saying, ‘We know full well the westerns that came before us and we’re not going to say they didn’t influence us because they heavily influenced us. And this is our love letter to them.’ 

To me, a neo-Western is taking certain elements from one and turning them on their ear. And certainly elements from another and fully embracing them. What we ended up doing here was a movie that encapsulated horror, action, drama, comedy. To do that took a lot of effort as a team. We pulled it off under Ben’s guidance.

Sonya: How do you know when to infuse humor into an action scene?

Derek: I remember someone referring to John Wick as a revenge movie but to me revenge movies often don't work. I thought John Wick was a justice movie. You had to do what’s right. When you do it that way and you take out the animosity, it leaves room for a little bit of humor.

What I love about Bob is that he came from a comedy background and I come from the action background. Bob realized one day, and we talked about it, that an action sequence is the same length as a comedy sketch. When you look at it that way, when does a punch become a smirk?

There’s this scene in Nobody where he goes to punch the guy and he hits his elbow. I think it’s comedy because frequently in an action movie, the action hero doesn’t make mistakes, whereas in real life, we always make mistakes. I think the comedy is found in the humanity we bring to the situation.

Sonya: Did growing up in the Midwest affect how you approached the world of Normal?

Derek: I think it did, but I was also influenced by the movies I loved watching when I was a kid which were the ones where you care about the main character.  I think Die Hard works because it’s about a guy who’s still in love with his ex-wife. Right?

Sonya: Right.

Derek: Or Lethal Weapon is about a man dealing horribly with PTSD and he just wants to be heard. One of the primary reasons people revisit films is because of characters. When I think of having grown up in the Midwest, my family, both immediate and extended, and my friendships were close… closer than most because that’s just the way of things. So with this film, just making sure there’s a warmth to the interactions is key but as soon as that Midwest nice shows its teeth, we’re off to the races.

Derek has nine-year-old twins, so he doesn’t have a set writing schedule. However, he writes every day and finds writing to be one of the “best kinds of alone”.

Sonya: What’s your outlining process?

Derek: If I spec, I don’t outline. I like just going in with a "Fade In" and doing a more chaotic approach. When I spec like that, I delete more pages than I write. When I have an idea and I want to package it with an actor, director, and producer, I do the treatment first. Sometimes I just spec based on the treatment or we set up the treatment and then I go up to write. The nice thing is, when you write a treatment, I can say I’m on page 40 of the script and I’m on page 3 of the treatment and that we gotta really render it down. It’s like you’re building out a map.

Sonya: Is there a difference in writing male and female action characters?

Derek: No, but what I will say is when you look at the build of certain actors and actresses… I don’t want a petite actress going up against a man-mountain and punching him in the face because it doesn’t make any sense. What I want them to do is go for the knees or nerve clusters. I just want it to make sense. The stunt guys that I’ve worked with over the years, and the stunt women, completely understand that and they want to bring a bit of that grounded ideology in addition to fifteen percent of their own technique.

Sonya: I read that when Ben Wheatley read your script, he said that he liked the ‘elastic plotting’.  What is elastic plotting?

Derek: I believe that a script is a living document and as soon as it’s cast, I sit down with the actors and I go through their lines. I want them to make the character their own. When it comes to the plotting itself, you’re pulled in one direction, then another. One snaps back as another grows taut. What was fun about that was Ben’s ability as a director to come in and tweak and tighten in a way visually that you can’t see on the page. And, ultimately, that’s why we were great teammates.

Sonya: What attracts you to a story?

Derek: Heroes that I care about. When you look at John McClane in Die Hard, John Rambo in Rambo, or Neo in The Matrix, they’re not the best at what they do. But they have will power and empathy. In every character I build, I want a little kid to see them and be like, ‘I want to be that when I grow up.’ If I see it, as an adult, I want to aspire to be like that. In many ways, these characters are emulating my own hero's journey, as well as any number of audience member’s journeys. There’s a tactile feel and appeal to these characters that I like. I like heroes, I don’t like anti-heroes. To me John Wick is a hero.

Sonya: When do you make time to write?

Derek: If I can get at least a two hour chunk where I can turn things off, I can sprint through it. The middle of the day is the best time for writing. If I have four hours, I love it. I try to write something new every day because if you’re just in the realm of development hell and rewrites and polishes, you lose a part of yourself.

Sonya: If you could adapt anything - a novel, anime, a video game - what would it be?

Derek: I adapted Hellsing. I loved that script. I think that project went the way of the Dodo, but I loved it. I would love to do Conan the Barbarian. I love the Frazetta paintings. I have all of the dog-eared, yellow paged novels I found at garage sales growing up. I love Alistair MacLean’s The Golden Gate and Where Eagles Dare. I’ve adapted Tom Clancy. I’d love to do a King adaptation. Stephen King changed my life as a little kid. My dream would be to have a director or actor come to me with something that is their dream to adapt and I could make their dream happen. I think that’s what I’m best at. Acting as a catalyst that just disappears into the background.

Sonya: Are you currently working on anything else?

Derek: Yes! I have Canyon, with Don Cheadle starring. I have a new movie called Painter, directed by Garrett Warren and starring Amber Midthunder and Walton Goggins, coming out in the fall. That is one percent of what I have going on because I love what I do.

Sonya: And we love what you do too! What do you enjoy the most about writing?

Derek: I just love seeing what comes out. Once it’s on the page, I love forming it and fixing it. Then going to a guy like Bob or Ben and saying, ‘Hey, I think I got something here.’ The treatment and the script are the first steps of a thousand steps.

Normal stars Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey, Ryan Allen, and Billy MacLellan. The Magnolia Pictures release hits theaters on April 17, 2026.