John Wick: Chapter 4 is less than a year away from being released, but fans are already anticipating John Wick 5. Of course, there hasn’t been much information on the fifth installment since its home studio Lionsgate put it on the back burner. With little to no updates, John Wick 4 director Chad Stahelski recently spoke about what’s happening with Keanu Reeves’ John Wick 5.
The status of John Wick 5 has remained in limbo ever since Lionsgate announced it had abandoned the plans to film John Wick 4 and 5 back-to-back. While he’s received numerous fan questions about the fifth installment, Chad Stahelski placed the lack of news on the studio about the film’s progress. It appeared the franchise director was ready to do another one as he gave Collider some insight into John Wick 5 ‘s status.
[As of right] now it is the studio's [full] intention to continue the franchise. And look, I'm not going to we've all seen directors and producers where they go, ‘Yes. I don't know. I guess I'll do five,’ or it's like, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah.’ And I'm just, ‘Look, man. 'John Wick 1' was a goof. We made it as a fun little action movie that we'd like to see." And the fact that now nine years later, it's changed our lives. It changed my life. It changed Keanu's life. It's changed a lot of other people's lives. And people still want to see more.
It is impressive that fans are still clamoring for more John Wick after almost a decade of Keanu Reeves killing countless bad guys. Stahelski seemed ready to continue the franchise until viewers are tired of the deadly hitman. But it appears the ball is in Lionsgate’s court now as they have yet to give an official start on production despite greenlighting John Wick 5 in 2020. As the director pointed out the first film unexpectedly birthed a high-action franchise and changed the trajectory of multiple careers, including Reeves.
While moviegoers await news on the fifth installment, this doesn’t mean the director and his leading man won’t be brainstorming the next film. Stahelski revealed he and Keanu Reeves probably won’t hash out the sequel’s storyline until the press tour for John Wick 4 begins. Each film has been formulated over glasses of Japanese whiskey at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.
Maybe the assassin will go to space for the next film even as Chad Stahelski contemplates his future with the action franchise. But the John Wick director did mention he and Reeves are willing to make more John Wick films until they physically can’t anymore. The Matrix star has opened up about his ideas for finding new and interesting ways to make the character suffer more among other things.
That doesn’t mean fans do have anything to look forward to with John Wick: Chapter 4. They can look forward to a reunion between Reeves and 47 Ronin co-star Hiroyuki Sanada as the Bullet Train star teased a history with Reeves’ hero in the upcoming sequel. Viewers got a little preview of their relationship in the intense John Wick 4 trailer that showed the assassin waging war on The High Table.
Until viewers get an update of John Wick 5, they still have John Wick: Chapter 4 to look forward to next year. The fourth installment will arrive in theaters on March 24, 2023. In the meantime, there are upcoming movies set to arrive for the rest of 2022 to preoccupy them until then.
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Keanu Reeves may be known as the nicest guy in Hollywood but his titular role in the highly successful John Wick franchise has also proven that he’s still one of the best action stars in the business.
In the films, the actor plays a former hitman who finds himself pulled back into the underworld of assassins and other criminals after a group of gangsters viciously kills his dog. Since then, John Wick has found himself ‘back on the job’ as his enemies attempt put a bounty on his head.
Since John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum was released in 2019, fans have been eager to see the franchise’s next installment. Luckily, John Wick: Chapter 4 is already slated for release (which will feature several franchise newcomers including Bill Skarsgård and Donnie Yen) while John Wick: Chapter 5 is still in the works.
Beyond this though, the future of the franchise appears uncertain for now.
John Wick Wasn’t Intended For Keanu Reeves Until He Made His Own
When writer Derek Kolstad first came up with an idea for John Wick, the lead character was originally written as a much older man whose hitman days are long behind him.
“The lead was a 75-year-old man, 25 years after being retired. It was the fun of watching Clint Eastwood kick ass,” producer Basil Iwanyk revealed in the book They Shouldn’t Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Ass-Kicking Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu, and the New Age of Action.
“I thought, ‘Okay, there’s probably one or two names you could do this with: Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford.'”
But then he got in touch with an agent who was then representing Reeves at CAA and the story went in a different direction. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘Keanu is one of the great action stars of the last 25 years — what happened to him? What’s he been doing?’ And he was directing his movie, Man of Tai Chi, and doing 47 Ronin,” Iwanyk recalled.
“We give him the script, we tell him, ‘Clearly, you’re not 75.'”
As for Reeves, the project piqued his interest immediately. “We all agreed on the potential of the project. It has this character of John Wick, but then you also have the real world, and at the same time this kind of underworld. This den of thieves that have this honor and a code,” the actor also said in the book.
“And I loved the quest that he goes on to reclaim his life. And the world he moves through to do it.” With Reeves on board, they set out to make changes to the story and that’s when Reeves jumped into the screenwriting process himself.
“I spent two months at Keanu’s house on the weekends working on the script,” Kolstad even revealed. “The first thing that Keanu said to me was, 'Okay, Derek, I'm going to play him 35.' And I'm like, ‘Fine.’”
Since then, the John Wick franchise has earned over $500 million worldwide collectively. And with two more installments coming up, one can well expect the franchise to reach the $1 billion mark soon enough.
What Happens To The John Wick Saga After Chapter 5?
For now, it doesn’t look like Reeves or anyone else has made plans for the franchise beyond Chapter 5 as the focus seems to be solely on getting the next installment right. It seems there was even an opportunity to film Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 back-to-back, butReeves and John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski eventually decided against it.
“It seems in the other franchises that have tried it, they just feel like the same thing done again, right? Like there's no new influence. Sometimes you need that creative breath to come up with fresh s***,” Stahelski said.
“Otherwise I'm stressed out about making two movies instead of one really good one. I'm just not that bright. I'm not that clever. I'm not that good as a director to project my vision years into the future and do two great movies.”
Instead, the duo would rather take things one movie at a time and go from there. “The film morphs and John Wicks are very organic because we're location based [sic]. So to plan out, you know, 10 locations over the course of two years, it's tough,” he added.
"And I think that's kind of a rip off [sic] to the fans too. Like you're not getting me at my best. You get me when it's 200 days in a production, we're all hammered. The choreographers are putting out the same moves. You're bored.” Stahelski also said, “I'm f****** lucky if I can pull off a great act, let alone two great movies.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 will be released on March 24, 2023, while fans would just have to wait for the release date of Chapter 5. Meanwhile, the John Wick spinoff Ballerina is already in the works starring Ana de Armas with Oscar-winning writer Emerald Fennell.
There is also the prequel series The Continental from Starz, which stars Mel Gibson. That is planned for a 2022 release.