Lionsgate sure isn’t kidding when it announced plans to expand the Wick-verse. On top of the recently released The Continental series, the forthcoming Ballerina spin-off movie, John Wick 5, and another spin-off film, development on a new TV show and anime series is currently underway.
The news comes by the way of The Discourse podcast (via The Playlist), with Chad Stahelski, director of all four John Wick films, discussing the advantage of using the TV format to grow its growing world.
“Lionsgate is having us develop the John Wick TV show, so we thought we could explore The High Table in that a little bit,” he shared, confirming that it’ll be “completely separate” from The Continental. The filmmaker also name-dropped some standout characters from the fourth movie, highlighting the prospect of exploring other character stories beyond Keanu Reeves’ titular assassin.
“Yeah, I love Donnie [Yen], I love Rina [Sawayama], love the Tracker (Shamier Anderson), and the TV show and the ancillaries will give us a chance to expand the kind of fun world we’ve created,” continued Stahelski. “It doesn’t have to be John Wick, the character specific, you know what I mean, so that we can explore all that stuff.”
Moving forward, the John Wick team is looking to dip their toes into the world of anime. “We’re really excited about it because we’re doing that and a Japanese anime because I love Japanese anime so much,” he revealed. “So to create all the cool stories that anime could achieve better than we could and the TV show to expand our world, we’ll still get our fix, you know what I mean? And we’ll still have all the fun.”
While John Wick: Chapter 4 appeared to be the end of the road for the franchise, it was anything but. Lionsgate and the producers have confirmed that John Wick 5 is in the works, believed to be in the very early stages.
“I think that there’s no question that it’s in development, but right now the story isn’t there yet,” producer Basil Iwanyk told IGN back in June this year. “And until the story is there, it isn’t… It’s real on something we’re trying to figure out. But we haven’t settled on what that movie looks like or feels like.” Still he assures fans that the studio and creative team is being “very methodical and very smart about how we do it and not go for the quick buck.”
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
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