JOHN WICK Director Chad Stahelski Has Ideas Written Down for Five More JOHN WICK Movies
After John Wick: Chapter 4 was released there was a lot of talk about the future of the franchise and if we would see a Chapter 5. It seemed like director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves were casting doubt on the future. But, before that, the director previously said that he and Reeves had John Wick movie ideas for days and that he could make these films for the rest of his career:
“I enjoy making these movies because there’s no limit. We create our own mythology, and we have a studio that both stays out of our way and supports us on the wacky decisions. If people go see the movie, and it makes money, and they came back to us, Keanu and I have ideas for days. I could live here for the rest of my career.”
Well, Stahelski recently revealed that he does have ideas already written down for the future of the franchise. In fact, he’s got ideas for, at least, the next five films! While speaking with Inverse, the filmmaker said:
“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. 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.”
Stahelski went on to say:
“Keanu and I are always interested in that, but we leave it hanging out there a little bit to figure out if we have something that we’d want to watch. Second, we have a studio that’s very enthusiastic and not just financially motivated, but they’re just interested in seeing what we could do with it. So, they’ve been super cool of us this year about branching off. I know the term is ‘spin-offs’ or ‘ancillaries’ or whatever you want to call it. Keanu and I both went back, and we all said, ‘Look, we have ideas for the John Wick world, other characters that aren’t John Wick-centric. Would you guys be interested in exploring that?’ And they were super cool, and they said, ‘Yes, we’d be very interested in that.’ Characters that weren’t in any of the movies that had fallen to the sidelines because they just didn’t fit in our storylines, and some existing characters that we’d like to see other things.”
John Wick producer Basil Iwanyk previously talked about the action film franchise and how Keanu Reeves really did want his character to die at the end of John Wick Chapter 4. He explains that Reeves was just physically and emotionally exhausted from making these movies:
"After the second, third, and fourth movie, making these films is so exhausting and it destroys Keanu, physically and emotionally. By the end, he’s always like, 'I can’t do this again,' and we agree with him. The guy is just a shell of himself because he just goes off and goes for it. He was like, 'I wanna be definitively killed at the end of this movie.'"
Regardless of that Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chair Joe Drake previously said that the studio is not done with John Wick. He explained: "We're not ready to say goodbye to Keanu with this franchise. It's what alternative there will be." He went on to add there are “a lot of different things that we can do. I’ve seen this movie five times in the last week. I can see the way that the audience moves him.”
When previously talking about John Wick: Chapter 5, producer Erica Lee said: "I think that on all of the movies at this point in the process, we were like, 'We're never doing it again!' They're super hard and exhausting to shoot. 'John Wick 4' was 97 days of night shoots, and Keanu [Reeves] gets the s*** kicked out of him. Everyone by this point is like, 'We had seven premieres, oh my God, we're done!'"
After that exhaustion wears off, though, Lee explains that everyone wants to get back together to do it again: "For the last two movies — there's been a Japan release for both of them that was a couple months later — everyone has had some time to rest and think about what we would do, what we could do. I think we all remember how much we love each other and love these movies. So yeah, I'm hopeful. Is the character of John Wick dead? Are there other versions? Are there different stories to tell? I think so."
Reeves also recently talked about coming back for another film, saying: “I guess I'm going to have to lean on never say never [...] For me, it feels really right that John Wick finds peace."
John Wick Chapter 5 is also confirmed to be in development. I’m pretty sure that we’ll see Reeves back as John Wick. I’ll be very surprised if we don’t.