While I am an unashamed fan of the John Wick movies and would love for there to be another million squillion of them, I am happy that the last movie, John Wick Chapter 4, seems to have given Keanu Reeves’ action hero the ending he desired… and deserved.
But, the movie was still in cinemas when we learned that the studio wanted another outing for Wick and not only that, but it is being pursued as I write.
“In our minds, Keanu and I are done for the moment,” director Chad Stahelski says, “We’re going to give John Wick a rest. I’m sure the studio has a plan. If everyone loves it and it goes kooky, then we’ll take a quiet minute.”
However, it seems that Reeves himself wanted Chapter 4 to be the end of the road for Wick and, at 59 years of age, I can hardly blame him for wanting to be out of such a physically exhaustive franchise.
Now, in a new interview, producer Basil Iwanyk talks about the toll they take on the star: “…making these films is so exhausting, and it destroys Keanu, physically and emotionally… By the end, he’s always like, ‘I can’t do this again,’ and we agree with him. The guy is just a shell of himself because he just goes off and goes for it. He was like, ‘I wanna be definitively killed at the end of this movie.’ We were like, ‘You know, we’ll leave a 10% little opening.'”
And anyone who has ever watched a horror/superhero/action movie franchise can tell you that 10% is more than a big enough window for a character to return from the seemingly dead.
John Wick spinoff The Ballerina will be ‘unlike anything we’ve seen in previous movies.’
On the much touted fifth movie, Iwanyk says: “It’s gonna be all hands to try to figure it out. Have we figured it out? No. And if we can’t figure it out, will there be one? No, of course not. No one is gonna try to just jam it for the sake of jamming it.”
With The Continental – a John Wick prequel series – finally hitting screens this weekend and The Ballerina spinoff set for next year, not to mention a large open-world game and other spinoffs in development, the world of John Wick is still very much alive… do we need Wick himself? I’d say we do but only time will tell.
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Consider this a hostile takeover. #TheContinental premieres Friday on @Peacock. pic.twitter.com/RW42ryNRR4
— The Continental (@TheContinental) September 18, 2023
Source: Collider
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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