Keanu Reeves Had One Strong Condition For Making John Wick 4
Either it happens, or Reeves won't show up!
The fourth John Wick film is on the way with no definitive word on whether or not Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski will ultimately collaborate for a John Wick: Chapter 5. But they are both talking about what needed to happen for the upcoming film for Reeves to reprise the role, and what will presumably need to happen in any subsequent entries. John Wick needs to do exactly one thing: suffer.
According to Stahelski, suffering is step 1 in the creative process for any John Wick film. “That’s where the action comes from,” the director told The Hollywood Reporter. “Figure out how to make him suffer, and then design backward.” Keanu Reeves added that some of the methods of torture come from him, saying, “I’ve called out a couple of things, like, let’s get on a horse in the desert. Let’s drive a little bit.” While the driving “a little bit” happens — often with catastrophic results — in pretty much every John Wick film, with the desert reference Reeves alludes to part of the upcoming John Wick: Chapter 4.
As Cinema Blend points, Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski have done a mighty fine job of making sure their deadly hero continues to suffer. Over the course of three films, the renowned assassin has been stabbed multiples times, shot multiples times, slammed into by a number of different cars, thrown down stairways, and of course there’s the emotional damage of losing first his wife and then his puppy. John Wick: Chapter 3 ends shortly after the hero is not only shot and takes a tumble off a building, but the culprit is Ian McShane’s Winston — the same guy Wick refuses to kill, thereby losing his hard-won peace with the High Table.
The Keanu Reeves hero will be looking at getting back at his enemies once John Wick: Chapter 4 finally releases on March 24, 2023. In footage that was screened at April’s CinemaCon, the assassin recovers from his ordeal in the previous film and tells Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King “I’m going to kill them all.” THR describes shots from “epic fight sequences” following the line. While an official subtitle hasn’t been announced, back in November a member of the stunt team posted Reeves’ gifts to all the stunt people in an Instagram post that has since been deleted. However, the images — which you can see in a tweet below — were captured, which seem to reveal that the full name of the next film is John Wick: Chapter 4 — Hagakure.
There are some questions about who will and won’t join Keanu Reeves for John Wick: Chapter 4. Each film adds new recurring characters. Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane, and Lance Reddick are all confirmed to return. There’s no word on the characters portrayed by Halle Berry, Anjelica Huston, or Asia Kate Dillon; all of whom were introduced in Chapter 3. Likewise, there’s no news on whether or not John Leguizamo will reprise the role of Aurelio. Leguizamo shot scenes for Chapter 3, though sadly his character was cut from the final product.
