Warning: This post contains spoilers about something that may or may not happen in John Wick: Chapter 4.
The fourth installment in the series that started with its hero avenging a slain puppy ended with him finally eating it. Or did it? John Wick: Chapter 4 concluded with a funeral, but it was no mistake that it was still ambiguous whether Keanu Reeves’ unretired assassin was really gone. Sure enough, after 4 gobbled up cash, star and filmmakers suddenly had to consider retconning said death for an unplanned Chapter 5. But it sure sounds like Reeves was ready to be done with his latest popular franchise character.
In a new interview with Collider (as caught by Deadline), franchise producer Basil Iwanyk reflected on how ready Reeves was ready to move onto something less tiring.
“After the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movie, making these films is so exhausting and it destroys Keanu, physically and emotionally,” Iwanyk said. “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.’ We were like, ‘You know, we’ll leave a 10% little opening.’”
Alas for Reeves, that 10% won out. And so now he and series director Chad Stahleski are “getting together to figure out what that story is” for the fifth outing, which they hadn’t planned on making.
Iwanyk had sky-high praise for Reeves and Stahelski, who he compared to no less a songwriting duo than Paul McCartney and John Lennon, with him as their Ringo. (It’s not clear who’s George Harrison. Maybe Ian McShane?)
“They’ll call me and let me know, ‘All right, we’re showing up. Here’s where you show up, and here’s what our story is,’” he explained. Mind you, Iwanyk never confirmed that Chapter 5 is definitely in the offing, he did say, “We all want another John Wick. We don’t know what it looks like and when it will happen, but we love each other and we love this world.”
In the meantime, Wick heads will have to suffice with the TV spinoff The Continental and that Ana de Armas spinoff movie Ballerina.