Great news for those who loved Ana de Armas as Paloma, the bright-eyed yet deadly CIA agent who helped Daniel Craig’s Bond out of a jam in Cuba in last year’s “No Time To Die.” De Armas plays a similar character in “Ballerina,” an upcoming “John Wick” spin-off that features the Cuban actress as a female assassin. The movie features a generic logline: a trained killer is out for blood against those who killed her family. But de Armas as the lead will be good fun and no doubt that Keanu Reeves will show up as Wick at some point.
But there’s more exciting talent connected to “Ballerina.” In a new interview with Elle, de Armas revealed that she brought in “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell to help punch up the movie’s script. “It was really important for me to hire a female writer, because to that point when I got involved in the project, it was only the director, Len Wiseman, and another guy [Shay Hatten]. And I was like, ‘That’s not going to work.,'” de Armas told the magazine. To be fair, Wiseman and Hatten are no slouches when it comes to these kinds of action films. Wiseman directed the first two films in the “Underworld” series, starring Kate Beckinsale, among others, while Hatten wrote “Army Of The Dead” and “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.” Still, sometimes these scripts need a woman’s touch.
That’s why de Armas thought of Fennell. “So I interviewed, like, five or six female writers,” de Armas continued, “We hired Emerald Fennell, which I was so proud of.” And Fennel is a good fit for the movie’s material. The up-and-coming filmmaker won a screenwriting Oscar for “Promising Young Woman,” also her directorial debut. She was also the showrunner for season 2 of “Killing Eve,” a show that knows a thing or two about deadly females. But even though de Armas brought Fennell in to punch up the script, it remains unclear if she’ll get a screenwriting credit for her work on “Ballerina.” That’s ultimately up for the Writers Guild Of America to decide. Fennell’s involvement with the film is still exciting, though.
“Ballerina” sees de Armas and Reeve reunite for the first time since the 2015 home-invasion thriller “Knock Knock.” That film was arguably de Armas’s breakout for stateside audiences. And Reeves will be back soon as John Wick next March in “John Wick: Chapter 4,” with another film in the series already in development. If those two films and “Ballerina” are just as successful as the first three in the franchise, expect more spin-offs to that universe down the line.
As for de Armas, catch her next in “The Gray Man,” premiering on Netflix next weekend. She also stars as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik‘s “Blonde,” one of the year’s most anticipated movies, on Netflix this September.
