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Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ballerina's Disappointing Box Office Return Has Me Worried About The Future Of The Franchise That I Love
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. I'm a huge fan of the John Wick franchise, and while I was a little frustrated with the timeline issues in Ballerina, I thought it was a solid, though not spectacular, movie. However, the spinoff's disappointing box office has me concerned that the franchise can only succeed if Keanu Reeves is the star, and I hope that's not the case. Ana de Armas certainly has the star power to carry a movie, and the rest of the Ballerina cast, including Gabriel Byrne, Norman Reedus, Anjelica Houston, Ian McShane, and the late Lance Reddick, bring plenty of glitz and glamour to the film as well. Then, of course, there is the star of the franchise, Keanu Reeves. Reeves was originally only announced as a cameo in Ballerina, but he ended up with a bigger role. That star power didn't translate to box office power, though. According to the latest numbers from Box Office Mojo, Ballerina has brought in just under $92 million worldwide. That is on a reported budget of $90 million. There is still time for the movie to make a little more money in theaters, but I think it's safe to say that wherever the final numbers land, it will be underwhelming. That has me worried about the future of the franchise, especially in projects that don't include Reeves, like the planned spinoff starring Donnie Yen as his character, Caine. Director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad (along with writer Shay Hatten) have created an incredible world in the John Wick movies. They've managed to do the seemingly impossible these days in Hollywood: build a new franchise without relying on existing I.P. The four films have all been successful with fans and critics alike, and while Ballerina has been generally praised by reviewers and audiences who have seen it, it seems not enough people are excited to see a movie that isn't focused on John Wick himself. This leads to the natural question: as popular as the character is, and as great as all the movies have been, including Ballerina, can this franchise succeed without the titular character? It's a question I can't answer yet, but if it's going to, the box office returns will have to be better. John Wick 5 is on the way, and it's a safe bet that it will be massively popular, just as the first four have been. Reeves and Stahelski will be back, and it's hard to imagine it won't be as good – and as successful – as the first four. Stahlelski is also excited about the Caine spinoff, which won't feature Reeves. On the flip side, however, is the undercurrent of both Ballerina's less-than-stellar box office numbers and the spinoff prequel show, The Continental, that didn't set the world on fire, either. The show, starring Mel Gibson and Colin Woodell, which you can stream on Peacock, got mixed reviews, and while it continued to build the world, it didn't bring a whole lot more to the table. So, that leaves us where we are today. We know the future of the John Wick franchise is bright when Reeves' now-iconic character is the focus, but it has me wondering if it can be without him. I sure hope so, because I really want more of the this world in my life.
BBC News
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'It lacked any sort of sell': Did Ballerina's title spell box-office disaster?
Action blockbuster From the World of John Wick: Ballerina has been one of the summer's big flops so far – and its muddled title could be to blame. Last week saw the release of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina – a spin-off of the Keanu Reeves gun-fu series – but you'd be forgiven for not noticing. The film had an underwhelming opening weekend at the US box office, making just $24m (£17.8m). That amount has since climbed to $41.8m (£31m), but it's still a disappointing figure for the film's studio, Lionsgate, considering the $90m (£66.8m) budget. Several factors may have been responsible. From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is a vehicle for Ana de Armas, and female-centred action films are a difficult sell. The release was pushed back to make time for reshoots: if it had come out closer to de Armas' explosive turn in the 2021 Bond film No Time To Die, as initially planned, cinema-goers might have been more intrigued. Additionally, last year's John Wick television spin-off, The Continental, lasted just three episodes before being cancelled – a sign of potential franchise fatigue, or that it's Reeves' central character that fans love in these films rather than the world he occupies. But there's another factor that can't be ignored: the title. "Ballerina doesn't scream action film," wrote film-industry news site Deadline in their analysis. "If you want to make a ton of money, maybe don't call your hardcore action movie Ballerina," echoed film commentator Mark Harris. Fans on Reddit have come to a similar conclusion: "Would your average moviegoer unplugged from the [media] hype know it's full of kick-ass fight scenes, from that word on a poster, on a cinema marquee?" asked one commenter, to plenty of upvotes. A glimpse at the marketing of the film suggests that Lionsgate anticipated this exact problem during its production. The film – about a pirouetting murder machine, directed by Underworld's Len Wiseman – was titled Ballerina when purchased as a spec script in 2017. But as shooting wrapped and the release date approached, the studio began to tinker. In the last year, the film's official title has changed from Ballerina to John Wick Presents: Ballerina to, finally, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina – an attempt to put Reeves' beloved hitman front and centre, despite him having only a small cameo in the film. But that still leaves the word "Ballerina" – it's now just "Ballerina" with too many other words bolted on. Tom Lashley of Gower Street Analytics, a firm that tracks and predicts box-office performance, believes that this might well have contributed to the tumbleweeds blowing in Ballerina screenings last weekend. As a title, it "lacked any sort of sell", he tells the BBC. "So the studio began tacking the name John Wick onto it in more and more aggressive ways, in an attempt to pull in more awareness. For me, it's never a good sign when things are getting renamed like that." There's precedent when it comes to Hollywood studios accidentally sabotaging their own releases by failing to land on titles with the right kind of appeal. Edge of Tomorrow (2014), starring Tom Cruise, was adapted from a Japanese novel entitled All You Need Is Kill, but as the producer of the time-twisting science-fiction thriller, Edwin Stoff, told The Hollywood Reporter at the film's premiere, "I think the word 'kill' in a title is very tricky in today's world." However, it was replaced by a title easily mistakable for a Lady Gaga track, revealing little of the film's "Groundhog Day during an alien invasion" concept. Even the film's fans were disgruntled, so when Edge of Tomorrow was released on DVD, the title was given less prominence than its tagline: "Live. Die. Repeat." More like this:• A combat epic that 'does what film does best'• Thunderbolts* is 'the greatest Marvel in years'• Disney's Snow White has a major 'identity crisis' On the other hand, swapping a bad title for a good one at the right moment can pay dividends. Pretty Woman was originally called Three Thousand, and then 3,000, because that's how much the sex worker is paid by her employer: at that point, the film was a dark skewering of "economic imbalance… it wasn't about sex work as much as an attack on out-of-control capitalism," screenwriter J F Lawton explained in 2020. But Disney executives thought that it sounded like a science-fiction film. When Lawton's screenplay was reconfigured as a fairy-tale romantic comedy, it was renamed Pretty Woman, a catchy title which referred to Roy Orbison's song, Oh, Pretty Woman, and which was used to describe Julia Roberts in countless articles about the film's breakout star. To Lashley, some of the best and most effective titles across film and TV are straightforward, distilling the story down to a single word – just as long as that word, unlike Ballerina, is the appropriate one. "[1990s sitcom] Friends was originally titled Across the Hall. It's hard to imagine it would have been as successful with that name," he says. The same might be said of the iconic Alien – or as it was originally titled, Star Beast, until screenwriter Dan O'Bannon realised that that name promised something more fantastical and Star Wars-esque than the lean, brutal horror Ridley Scott was creating. Ditto Casablanca – a film originally destined to hit cinemas as Everybody Come to Rick's – and Beetlejuice, a film that Warner Bros pushed director Tim Burton to release under the imagination-less title House Ghosts. Burton pushed back by pretending to be dead set on calling the film Scared Sheetless. Warner backtracked: maybe Beetlejuice wasn't such a bad name after all, they decided. Sometimes, it seems, the protagonist's distinctive name can be the answer, whether it's Annie Hall – changed from Anhedonia – or Amélie, Moana or Barbie. Take the example of a film with the vague working title Scorn. It was shot, edited and prepped for release, but its star kept getting its name wrong in interviews, referring to it by his character's name instead. Not a good sign. Executives at the studio financing the film decided to change the title now that buzz was building. That star was Keanu Reeves. The film was called, eventually, John Wick. -- If you liked this story sign up for The Essential List newsletter, a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
Geek Tyrant
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
JOHN WICK Director Chad Stahelski Isn't Holding Back About THE CONTINENTAL - 'Our Opinion Was Not Really Noted' — GeekTyrant
The world of John Wick is built on a very specific recipe… one part Keanu Reeves, one part kinetic fight choreography, and a whole lot of visual flair pulled from anime, spaghetti westerns, and 1970s crime films. According to director Chad Stahelski, the creators of Peacock's The Continental missed nearly all of that. While Ballerina , the first big-screen spin-off featuring a brief return from Reeves, finds its footing in theaters, Stahelski isn't mincing words about the TV show that tried to expand the Wickverse without him. In a recent conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, he pulled back the curtain on just how detached he and Reeves were from The Continental , and how the final product felt far from what they'd built. Stahelski explained: 'Keanu and I were — I wouldn't say sidelined, but our opinion was heard and not really noted. They tried to convince me they knew what they were doing. A group of individuals thought they had the magic sauce. 'But if you take out Basil Iwanyk's producing intuitiveness, if you take out Keanu's way of delivering quirky dialogue and if you take out all the visuals I have in my head from Wong Kar-wai, anime, Leone, Bernardo Bertucci or Andrei Tchaikovsky... then it's not the same thing. 'They thought this was as easy as using anamorphic lenses, do a kooky hotel, put in weird dialogue, and insert crime drama.' That disconnect shows. While The Continental had talent like Mel Gibson and Colin Woodell attached, it came and went with little fanfare, a blip in a franchise known for its pop-cultural impact. Stahelski went further, sharing what makes the films tick, and how different that process is from the way studios typically operate. 'If you saw our process, you'd be like, 'You're telling me this billion dollar franchise does it this way?' I'm scouting my next film in London and we saw a cool location yesterday which totally changed the second act. 'We rewrote the whole thing. I find great cast members and rewrite their parts constantly. That's what makes [the movies] so good and organic — we're constantly upgrading. But the studio likes to know what they're getting for their buck and want to lock a script for budget reasons. While we're saying, 'Just write the check, we'll see you at the finish line.'' It's that looseness, that constant reshaping on the fly, that gives John Wick its badass pulse, and it's a process that clearly didn't carry over to the TV adaptation. Looking ahead, the next spin-off will follow Donnie Yen's character, Caine, and Stahelski sounds far more confident about that one. 'The Donny Yen spinoff doesn't have the John Wick character. It's got Donny Yen and it's an ode to kung fu movies. If John Wick 1 was about Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, this is about Chow Yun-fat, John Woo and Wong Kar-wai. So I think that one is a little easier to get it across to audiences because it's in a sub-genre of what we love.' As for John Wick himself? After Chapter 4, it looks like the character has officially bowed out… for now. But Stahelski doesn't rule out a return. 'The studio would very much will it into existence, I'm sure, at some point. Look, they've been great and they've asked us to really try and we have a really good couple of ideas and we're going to try.' I'm sure that we'll see Wick back in action at some point. I'll be very surprised if we don't. I just don't want to see talent, time, and money wasted on another half-assed spinoff series.
News18
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
Ballerina X Reviews: Action-Packed John Wick Spin-Off Gets A Thumbs Up
Last Updated: Directed by Len Wiseman, the movie recently had its premiere, and the early reviews have been positive. After four exciting John Wick movies with Keanu Reeves, the creators decided to expand the story with a new show called The Continental. Now, two years later, a new spin-off titled Ballerina is ready to hit theatres. Ballerina, the first spinoff film in the franchise, takes place between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4. Directed by Len Wiseman, the movie recently had its premiere, and the early reviews on X (Formerly Twitter) have been very positive. Even Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning star and de Armas's rumoured partner, Tom Cruise, praised the film. The story takes place after the third film, where Wick was last seen falling from the Continental's rooftop. In the fourth movie, he met the High Table and was believed to have died. While Reeves's character plays a cameo in Ballerina, the main focus will be on Eve Macarro, played by de Armas. She's a skilled fighter who goes on a journey to take revenge for her father's death. To prepare, she trains with the deadly Ruska Roma group. While promoting the final Mission Impossible movie last month, Tom Crusie, who saw the movie earlier, said, 'I saw the movie, it just kicks ass, it's right in that tone, it's right in that Wick world, you're gonna love it." Following the recent premiere of Ballerina, a user wrote, 'This movie is hot. Ballerina delivers the year's best action; one sequence in particular is a fist-pumping inferno. Ana de Armas fits seamlessly into this world as Eve and gives us a spin-off done right. I'm going to need more Ballerina. 'Fight like a girl'." This movie is hot! #BallerinaMovie delivers the year's best action; one sequence in particular is a fist-pumping inferno. Ana de Armas fits seamlessly into this world as Eve and gives us a spin-off done right. I'm going to need more #Ballerina. 'Fight like a girl." — Phil Walsh (@PhilWMovies) June 5, 2025 Another called Ballerina 'an excellent expansion of the John Wick franchise. Ana de Armas kicks so much ass and in such creative ways. The action is brutal and thrilling. I'm ready for more of Ana de Armas' Eve. Give her a trilogy. And of course, Keanu Reeves kills it as John Wick." #BallerinaMovie is an excellent expansion of the JOHN WICK franchise. Ana de Armas kicks so much ass, and in such creative ways. The action is brutal and thrilling. I'm ready for more of Ana de Armas' Eve. Give her a trilogy!And of course, Keanu Reeves kills it as John Wick. — Ryan Cortero (@ryan_reflects) June 5, 2025 'From flamethrowers to flying kitchen plates, Ballerina hits hard with the kind of stylish mayhem you'd expect from the world of John Wick. Ana de Armas doesn't just dance, she kills it," a comment read. From flamethrowers to flying kitchen plates, Ballerina hits hard with the kind of stylish mayhem you'd expect from the world of John Wick. Ana de Armas doesn't just dance, she kills it. #BallerinaMovie #JohnWick @ballerinamovie — Big Gold Belt Media (@BigGoldBelt) June 3, 2025 An individual stated, 'Any movie with the Baba Yaga is a good one. Thank god the director of the John Wick films was brought in for significant reshoots. Had the insane action and choreography you'd expect. Ana was a badass to watch on screen. I definitely recommend." Just saw #BallerinaMovie Any movie with the Baba Yaga is a good one. Thank god the director of the John Wick films was brought in for significant reshoots. Had the insane action and choreography you'd expect. Ana was a badass to watch on screen. I definitely recommend — Elocin ✨ (@Elocin_712) June 5, 2025 One more added, 'Ballerina doesn't just earn its place in the John Wick universe, it explodes onto the scene like a perfectly timed grenade, expanding Wick's world beautifully. Ana de Armas mows down nameless faces with jaw-dropping gun-fu and grenade-fueled chaos that'll leave your pulse racing. A few story-related elements fall short, but John Wick's cameo never overshadows our central heroine, whose classic revenge quest carries the right amount of intensity. This is the spin-off we didn't know we needed, and I'd love to see more." #Ballerina doesn't just earn its place in the John Wick universe… it explodes onto the scene like a perfectly timed grenade, expanding Wick's world beautifully. Ana de Armas mows down nameless faces with jaw-dropping gun-fu and grenade-fueled chaos that'll leave your pulse… — Austin Burke (@theBurk3nator) June 6, 2025 Keanu Reeves isn't the only familiar face returning in Ballerina. Fans will also see Anjelica Huston as the Director, Ian McShane as Winston Scott and the late Lance Reddick as Charon. Norman Reedus joins as Daniel Pine, and Gabriel Byrne plays the main villain, the Chancellor, who uses an entire town to try and stop Eve. The movie is scheduled to release on June 13. First Published:
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘John Wick' Boss Chad Stahelski Gets Candid About Franchise: 'My Process Is F***ed'
John Wick creator Chad Stahelski is attempting one of the trickiest pivots in Hollywood: Turn a series of hit movies with a dead hero into a broader franchise. His four John Wick films starring Keanu Reeves as a stoic ronin gunslinger have been a rousing success for studio Lionsgate. But his last effort, 2023's John Wick: Chapter 4, killed off its world-weary protagonist in a finale that felt perfectly fitting. After the film grossed nearly half a billion dollars, Lionsgate and Stahelski suddenly had a high-class problem: John Wick the franchise clearly has a lot more life left in it, while the John Wick character was seemingly six feet under. What to do? Lionsgate attempted (without Stahelski and Reeves) a Peacock spinoff TV limited series titled The Continental, which fell flat (Stahelski has thoughts about this). This week sees the release of the franchise's first spinoff movie, Ballerina, which stars Ana de Armas as an assassin in the world of John Wick (Reeves shows up briefly). There is also a recently released documentary going behind the scenes of making the films (Wick is Pain), a forthcoming John Wick prequel anime movie, a spinoff in the works starring Donnie Yen's fan-favorite blind assassin Caine and — possibly, perhaps certainly? — a John Wick: Chapter 5 (Stahelski has thoughts about all of this, as well). More from The Hollywood Reporter Jason Constantine, Lionsgate Co-President, Dies at 55 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina' Review: Ana de Armas Slays in a Hard-Charging Spinoff That Makes for a Mindless Summer Treat Keanu Reeves Applauds Ana de Armas' "Joy for the Action" as She Joins 'John Wick' Universe A former stuntman, Stahelski rose through the ranks as a second unit director on action films (such as Captain America: Civil War) before he and then-partner David Leitch were given a shot at helming 2014's John Wick, which showcased their mesmerizing style of kinetic 'gun fu' action. Below, as part of The Hollywood Reporter's Titan interview series, Stahelski talks about all things Wick — and being a lone warrior fighting an endless line of studio suits. Last year, Lionsgate announced that you now have 'franchise oversight' over the world of John Wick. How much power does that actually entail? I don't know the answer. I promise you, James, I am pushing to find out. We seem to be doing something right, yet with every [movie], there is a bit of an argument. Now, I get it. Studios have to deal with a varying degree of talent and vision and some people fall short of doing what they say. Sometimes [studios are] told, 'You don't understand my vision' and it's a cop out for 'I have no idea what my vision is.' If I said to you, for John Wick 3: 'I'm not going to do anything that's worked before, I'm going to have a bunch of dogs that bite crotches, and I'm going to kill 186 people.' Are you going to give me $100 million for that? Well, I'd say you have to work on that pitch. But if I give you the script, believe me, it reads worse than that pitch sounds. But in my head it makes sense. It used to come down to me being a big enough asshole but, sometimes, the asshole route doesn't work. So now I'm a lot more patient. I go: 'Listen, this idea could go south, it's super weird, just give me two weeks with my stunt team and then watch a video.' Later they're like, 'Oh, that looks cool.' Then everybody takes credit for everything. But nobody thinks half our ideas are going to work. Leitch says in the documentary — a bit critically — that you 'get a lot of juice by blowing things up and putting them back together again.' Do you think that's still true? It's 100 percent true. My process is fucked. It's so not linear. I still get told how to write scripts. 'You can't do it that way.' Says who? The guys who suck? I had an argument today with somebody saying 'That's not how you put a set-piece together.' Who is telling you this? Everyone who has done it a certain way for 20 years. Because blowing it up and ripping it apart fucks with people's heads. I'm not trying to be an anarchist with logistics. But this is why there are fucking tropes. So many movies look the same because their process is the same. You have to ask 'Why?' 'Because they do X,Y, X.' Well, then fuck X, Y, Z. And we have done that in every department for five films now. It does frustrate people. The saga crossed the $1 billion mark after the release of . What does that milestone mean to you? We tried to be an audience member and not chase the dollar. Keanu and I did it a love letter to '70s action film and wuxia [Chinese martial arts] and Chambara [Japanese sword fighting] There are a lot of fans who like kung fu movies, Samurai films, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone. John Wick is a culmination of that. And because we've done okay financially with each one, it allowed us to increase the budget and keep doing more of the same — hopefully, in a better way, while expanding the mythology. Watching the documentary, I marveled at the studio notes on the first movie: They didn't want you to kill the dog or for Wick to execute the villain played by Alfie Allen, and they wanted the bad guys to have poisoned Wick's wife instead of her dying of natural causes. I always wonder when I hear stories like this: After the movie is a hit, does anybody say, 'We were wrong about literally all those things'? That happened once. On John Wick 2, there was disagreement with someone very high up in the studio over John Wick doing euthanasia-assist to a character called Gianna (Claudia Gerini). It was, 'Oh my God, we can't have John Wick just kill her!' We're not killing her. She had already slit her wrists and John Wick offers a way out that's more honorable. They wanted two versions. We came out of the test screening and the audience was way more on board with what's in the final film. The executive didn't miss a beat, they just went, 'You were right, I was wrong.' To their credit. It was pretty cool. But no one gets this: Even if you do a bake-off with two versions in test screenings, you would need the same audience to watch both versions to compare them, because audiences are different. But that never happens. I think you can learn a lot from test screenings, but I don't think you can make choices based on them without showing the audience everything. You weren't really involved with TV series. Were there any creative lessons to be learned from that in terms of how to expand this universe? Keanu and I were — I wouldn't say sidelined, but our opinion was heard and not really noted. [The studio] tried to convince me they knew what they were doing. A group of individuals thought they had the magic sauce. But if you take out Basil Iwanyk's producing intuitiveness, if you take out Keanu's way of delivering quirky dialogue and if you take out all the visuals I have in my head from Wong Kar-wai, anime, Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci or Andrei Tarkovsky … then it's not the same thing. They thought this was as easy as using anamorphic lenses, do a kooky hotel, put in weird dialogue, and insert crime drama. If you saw our process, you'd be like, 'You're telling me this billion dollar franchise does it this way?' I'm scouting my next film in London and we saw a cool location yesterday which totally changed the second act. We rewrote the whole thing. I find great cast members and rewrite their parts constantly. That's what makes [the movies] so good and organic — we're constantly upgrading. But the studio likes to know what they're getting for their buck and want to lock a script for budget reasons. While we're saying, 'Just write the check, we'll see you at the finish line.' You had the premiere of (which just gave ) Tuesday night. How did that go? It seemed to go pretty good. English audiences don't laugh much. Everybody seemed to really enjoy it … We were very fortunate to find Ana de Armas and the enthusiasm and punch she has. There's got to be a love if you're coming into our franchise. Sometimes I'll call the agencies and ask, 'Who loves John Wick?' Norman Reedus bumped into Keanu one day and said, 'Hey man, I love the Wicks' [and was cast in Ballerina]. Every cast member we've got has been a fan of the previous films. They come to work and it's a different vibe because they understand the world. Do you ever lay awake at night and worry that the world of only works with John Wick? Because that's a scary question, right? Keanu and I actually just talked about this. Look, it's always tricky. I think the world can be supported as long as you don't go crazy and carpet bomb. What we're doing now are stories we really want to tell that feel organic. You've seen Alice in Wonderland. Now what about the Rabbit? What about the Cheshire Cat? Also, sometimes in your own franchise, you get so far up your own ass with the mythology that by the 10th movie you don't know what's going on. I don't ever want to get that way with Wick. I want each one to be able to stand alone. Was Keanu always supposed to appear in ? That wasn't in the original script. To be honest, I was kind of against it. But I do see the benefit and we wanted to help out [director Len Wiseman]. We had just opened John Wick 4 and it was huge. He couldn't go back to the model of the first John Wick and do a little $18 million indie thing and try to build it up. In order to stay in the same game, you got to give him a fighting chance. And the easiest way to transfer that over — at least, from the studio point of view — was have Wick in Ballerina in a special timeline. Does he appear in ? The Donny Yen spinoff doesn't have the John Wick character. It's got Donny Yen and it's an ode to kung fu movies. If John Wick 1 was about Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, this is about Chow Yun-fat, John Woo and Wong Kar-wai. So I think that one is a little easier to get it across to audiences because it's in a sub-genre of what we love. The documentary shows the incredible amount of training Keanu undertakes, and his punishment seems to ramp up higher for each movie. He's now 60. If you do another with him, there has to be a limit to how hard you can push this guy, right? Because at a certain point, things break. What do you do if you're a world-class sprinter in your twenties and you don't run so fast at 30? You start doing marathons — because marathon runners hit their prime in their mid-to-late thirties. You got to deal with the turns. For the first John Wick, Keanu had a really bad knee injury and he couldn't punch and kick. So we came up with the Jiujitsu and gun-fu. We're not going to lower the bar. We're just going to move the bar to something we haven't done before. You've said that won't renege on the ending of , that John Wick will still have died. Has that evolved? The last time we spoke last year, you were trying to crack it. I'm not going to lie to you, it's a bit of a conundrum. Me and Mike Finch — the writer on 4 who's also writing 5 — we've got a pretty good story that I think is cool. Once we have a 50-page book, and if we're feeling it, we'll sit with Keanu and shape this thing. Look, everybody seems to want it. It's a matter of whether we crack it. We're actively working on it. It's just … is it going to be satisfying? Is a prequel possible? Because the anime movie is a prequel, I assume this wouldn't be. Keanu and I are not interested in going backwards. With the anime, you don't have to de-age, you don't have explain weird stuff, you don't have to add a backstory. You accept anime in its own language without explanations. Anime just goes pop. I know you've heard this before. But ended so well that there is a certain amount of … like there's this feeling that nothing popular is allowed to end anymore. I'm with you, man. Keanu and I have discussed this many times and feel the same way. We finished 3 and thought that was going to be the last one. Look, we never expected to end John Wick. I just hate cheesy endings. I hate happy endings. Over a long enough timeline, everything's a fucking tragedy. If you kill 86 people, you don't get away. So when we got to 4, we wanted to have something that had a lot of fate and consequence. The ending was going to be a cliffhanger. Then we were sitting in Japan [during the filming of 4] going, 'We didn't stick the landing.' [Our original ending] kind of sucked. 'Fuck, we got to finish this, right?' So I was really happy with the way 4 ended. It was Keanu and I saying, 'Thank you, it's been awesome, but it is time to go.' I didn't want to overstay our welcome. If we go down the road of John Wick 5 and build this story and decide this isn't right, there are probably going to be 10 other things we'll discover that we'll use for other things. It's a great creative exercise. It's being in the room riffing with people we love. That's nothing but wins. So it's not a lock that will exist? The studio would very much will it into existence, I'm sure, at some point. Look, they've been great and they've asked us to really try and we have a really good couple of ideas and we're going to try. What are the biggest mistakes action movies seem to be making when you see other films? Please make sure you print this: This is only my opinion and my opinion is no better or worse than anybody else's. Some things I think don't work might work for some people. It's the execution. Like with Die Hard. There's not a lot of action, the whole thing takes place on three floors of a building, but John McClane is a great character. When he runs through the glass barefoot, I'm fucking in — that's what you have to do. I could do the exact same choreography that's in John Wick, but if you didn't love Keanu Reeves as John Wick, we wouldn't be talking right now. There are better athletes than Jackie Chan— But we love Jackie Chan. You fucking love him! For the longest time, [the industry consensus] was, 'It's not about the action, it's about the story.' That's not true. And then there was, 'It's not about stories, it's about the action.' That's not true! You have to conceive the whole thing together. So biggest problem with action movies is people think they're making two separate movies. The story doesn't stop just because there's punching and kicking. In some of the superhero stuff, when a second unit guy is doing half the movie, everything looks different during the action. Even the coloring and editing is different. [The film] never feels aligned. So if you don't want to shoot your own action, then don't do the movie. Whether it's Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan or Guy Ritchie or the Wachowskis, they all shoot their own action. You mentioned how with a different actor wouldn't work. In the documentary, you first offer Jason Statham the style for his movie . Did Jason ever circle back and go, 'I should have done that'? So I want to straighten that up. We showed it to Jason and he thought it was cool as shit and wanted to do it. I'm the one who shut it down because it didn't fit Jason's character. With gun-fu, to do even a small sequence, he would have had to kill 20 people. Safe only has like four real bad guys; most of the guys are just guards showing up for work like the Red Shirts in Star Trek. We didn't want Jason's character to be a mass murderer. You talk about studio notes you didn't do. Was there any note that you did that you regret? Yeah. On one particular John Wick, I had a shit fight over literally three minutes. Most studios, and even critics, have this weird thing about run times. Do you really give a fuck how long a movie is? The real question is: Are you bored? I have sat through a 90-minute movie that felt like four hours, and I had watched Lawrence of Arabia or Seven Samurai and it felt like two hours even though they're four. No one bitched and moaned about Return of the King and Peter Jackson's cut is four hours, so fuck off. They'll say, 'There's metadata that says people get bored with anything over two hours and 20 minutes.' No one's going to come out of a movie going, 'That movie is fucking great, but it should have been a nice 2:36.' So when they said, 'You've got to cut three minutes,' I looked at them like, 'The audience gave it a 90 in a test score!' They may be running the studio and great at financing, but I've made four movies that have grossed over a billion dollars. I'm like, 'If the movie sucks, I'm willing to listen to anything. But if people love the movie, then who fucking cares?' I'm sure there are times where you're like: 'How many hit movies do I need to make — in a row, with each grossing more than the last — in order for you to trust me?' We know it's not four! I know that. I don't have plans on sucking on the next one. But if I get past five, we can have this conversation again. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
