Lionsgate
Update: The John Wick sequel has been made official with an announcement by Lionsgate. Keanu Reeves will be back and screenwriter Derek Kolstad is also returning.
I guess I should finally see John Wick. I mean, I was gonna anyway, because I feel like the one loser who isn’t jumping up and down this week with excitement over the release of the movie on Blu-ray. But now I have an even bigger reason to feel obligated to catch up with the action thriller: there’s going to be a John Wick 2. The directors of the original, Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, revealed to Movies.com this week that the sequel is in development, but there aren’t any details about it just yet.
Keanu Reeves isn’t even officially on board, though it’s hard to imagine given what this surprise sensation is doing for his career and given the history he’s had with Stahelski, going back as far as his doubling for the actor on Point Break, I think they’ll all want to keep working together (I also think Reeves needs to be in Cowboy Ninja Viking, which they’re set to direct next). “If we could work with Keanu Reeves for 10 movies you’d have a really cool career,” the former stunt man told the site.
Stahelski also claims it’ll be easy to top the action of the first movie, but it’s more important to him and Leitch that they maintain Wick is the next great screen hero, along the lines of those played by Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson and Robert Downey Jr. “Pick a name,” he says, “you love the guy first. Good action, bad action, you just love them in action.”
I don’t know if I entirely agree with that statement, especially with those names he cites, but I get what he means. It’s preferable to also have a great story and great action, not Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Taken 3 and Iron Man 2. I have to wonder whether they’re concerned about their star and thinking of how Reeves’s Neo wasn’t a strong enough character to make up for the faults of the Matrix sequels.
This post was originally published on February 4, 2015.
