VI-DIEU NGUYEN

Head of Story, Netflix Animation

Vi-Dieu Nguyen is currently a Head of Story at Netflix Animation. He was born to a Vietnamese immigrant family in Southern California in the 80s, where he grew up loving Spielberg movies, Bob Dylan, and In-N-Out Burgers.

His family generously introduced Vi to movies with weekly family movie nights, where they fed him a steady diet of VHS rentals from the local video store. This is when he discovered movies like E.T., Star Wars, and The Little Mermaid, which all transported little Vi to new worlds and told stories about characters who struggled to belong, something that particularly spoke to him. It is from watching these movies, and his love of drawing, that Vi decided he wanted to work in film and animation.

And how was he going to do this? In sixth grade, Vi was doing a book report on Walt Disney when he discovered that Disney had established a school for his animators called the California Institute of the Arts. That’s when he decided he was going to work as hard as he could to go there. He attended after school animation programs, summer programs, community college life drawing classes, and filled his sketchbook with people at the mall, the beach, and everywhere in between. His hard work paid off and he went to his dream college, CalArts.

After attending CalArts from 2002 to 2006, Vi was selected to be part of Pixar’s first story internship, where he got a high quality training on all things story.

From there, Vi went on to work at many of the big studios, including Blue Sky, LAIKA, DreamWorks, and Sony. He had many great mentors along the way. At DreamWorks, his teachers included Derek Drymon (SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS) who taught him about comedy and Louis del Carmen (FROZEN II, THE CROODS), who taught him cinematography.

When Louis got hired as a Head of Story at Sony, he remembered Vi and hired him for a bible movie called The Star. However, there were some scheduling issues and Vi ended up getting hired on SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE instead. SPIDER-VERSE went on to win Best Animated Feature that year.

On SPIDER-VERSE, they would screen the animatic to outside directors for feedback, and one of them, Sam Levine, noticed Vi’s storyboards and hired him for his movie, the upcoming film, DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS, starring Dwayne Johnson. During SUPER-PETS, Vi nearly took a job offer on SPIDER-VERSE 2, and just as the ink was about to dry on the deal, SUPER-PETS offered him a promotion as Head of Story. He gladly accepted and took this opportunity to add leadership and management skills to his repertoire.

Growing up, Vi struggled with feelings of not belonging. Then he found “his people” at CalArts and the animation industry. Today, he is on his second gig as Head of Story, working on a big budget Wyclef Jean-produced musical set in Haiti.