The John Wick franchise took the world by surprise almost a decade ago, with the first installment becoming a sleeper hit and eventually grossing $1 billion worldwide. The latest entry, simply called John Wick 4, possibly saw the end of the assassin’s adventures, but the director and creator of the Keanu Reeves-led series has other plans.
Talking to Inverse, Chad Stahelski mentioned he has “notebooks and notebooks” of ideas he has for future John Wick sequels, outside of the FX prequel series The Continental, and what’s next for both him and Reeves as he addresses that particular final scene.
“As far as John Wick 4 goes and the ending, if you go back and you watched–God forbid–all four in a row, it’s supposed to be a bit of a fever dream,” he said laughing. “You can see how the first one starts fairly grounded. The second one’s a rock opera, and the third one’s a kung fu classic. The fourth one is this weird western samurai film. They get more ridiculous as you go. They get more anime as you go… it’s supposed to be a myth. It’s supposed to be a tale. Some people miss that.”
Stahelski went on to explain that the movies are supposed to be compared to mythological tales of gods and men and how it’s similarly structured to a fantasy story. “Did John Wick die? The meta is did John die or ‘John Wick’ die? What’s freedom? What’s fate? And that’s not a gag. I didn’t do it to end a franchise. Keanu and I didn’t map it all out. We did John Wick, [and] ended it. We did 2, ended it, and we waited six months to a year or two; we had an idea, and we went.”
Along with The Continental TV show, there is also The Ballerina in production as well, that was aiming for a summer 2024 release, but with both WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes over the summer, that could put a pin in things. However, Stahelski isn’t short of ideas on how Wick could continue, but it’s actually putting things in motion he hasn’t figured out just yet.
“I have notebooks and notebooks of shit behind me, John Wicks 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. We have ideas for days. We just don’t have the story locked. I have no interest in doing the cash grab of bringing John Wick back for something. Is he a character I like? Of course,” he said. “And if I did a couple of John Wick movies, great. Keanu would do one again in a second if we had a good story. We leave that open-ended. I know that the studio would love us to say we have another one.”
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