Despite the off-screen death of Keanu Reeves’ legendary assassin in “John Wick Chapter 4,” we learned during CinemaCon last April that Lionsgate was indeed moving forward with “John Wick 5” as both director Chad Stahelski and Reeves would be officially returning.
While we’re waiting patiently for the hook and plot details of the fifth installment, Stahelski has talked with Empire Magazine, giving us some minor ideas of where the next adventure is going. It sounds like Stahelski and the team are going to be aiming for big swings as he confirms the “new story” won’t be a “continuation.”
“The saga of ‘John Wick’ was pretty wrapped up,” Stahelski told Empire of his fifth film. “So the only way to do a 5 is to have a new story that involves John Wick. It’s not a continuation with The High Table. John dealt with his grief. It will be really different, and everybody [will] see the trailer and go, ‘Holy fuck… I gotta see that.’”
“The ‘John Wick’ TV show and the animation are big priorities,” confirmed Stahelski. “Our idea is to try some things and explore some threads, and use those two properties to catapult us forward into the ideas for ‘John 5.'”
The in-demand action director suggests that they’re going to attempt to break from the formula, seemingly moving away from the puppetmaster syndicate known as The High Table, and hyping up the reaction audiences will have to their mysterious new direction.
What that exactly means and will look like remains to be seen until we get more details, as it sounds like the show and anime are going to be influencing this fifth story.
Lionsgate is all-in on the “Wick” universe with spinoffs such as Len Wiseman‘s “Ballerina” heading to theaters on June 6 with Ana de Armas playing another assassin connected to the Ruska Roma. Fellow action star Donnie Yen is set to star/direct his Hong Kong-set “Caine” movie (featuring the blind assassin, who is now free of The High Table) that recently saw Rina Sawayama reprising the Akira role and boasts a script penned by Mattson Tomlin (“The Batman Part II”).
Reeves is set to make a return as Wick in “Ballerina” as the story takes place between the events of the third and fourth movies, and will also be involved in an anime movie that’ll focus on Wick’s “impossible task” alluded to in the first two installments that led to his retirement.
That said, we’re still waiting for the studio to give “John Wick 5” a release date so we have an idea of when they’ll start production, as Stahelski is also currently attached to direct Henry Cavill in his long-gestating “Highlander” reboot.
