Keanu Reeves is one of our great action stars, and that includes his role as John Wick in the franchise of the same name. While the first movie drew audiences in with its tale of revenge at the hands of John (and showed us all what would happen if we killed his dog), the series has continued to bring big names to the franchise as well as give us action sequences to talk about—including John killing a man with a book.
But there has been a break between the films. Starting with John Wick in 2014, the third film came out in 2019, and we haven’t had another since. To be fair, there was (once upon a time) a day where both John Wick 4 and The Matrix Resurrections were supposed to come out on the same day but … that didn’t happen. Point is, it’s been a while. But it seems that after the release of John Wick 4, we don’t have that long to wait until we see John again.
In an exclusive to Collider, we have now learned that Keanu Reeves will return as John Wick in the Ana de Armas-led film Ballerina, which will serve as a spinoff to the John Wick franchise. This comes on the heels of Ian McShane also joining the film as the manager of The Continental Hotel and frankly, this rules.
What we know about the world of John Wick is always hidden behind the spy world but Ballerina seems to focus on a young assassin (de Armas) and her quest to get revenge on hitmen from her past. Having Reeves be a part of this revenge story? All that much better. And it is fun to know that he’s already in Prague filming the movie given that we thought it’d be a while before we saw John again after the release of John Wick 4 in March 2023.
Expanding the John Wick universe
There has been controversy in the expansion of the universe, mainly that the television series added Mel Gibson to its cast, but outside of this gross addition, the rest of the universe is adding some great talent to it. (There’s still time to cut Gibson from the cast!)
It is exciting, though, to see the expansion of this universe. It was refreshing, when it first came out, to have Reeves leading another action franchise since it had been so long since The Matrix trilogy, and seeing that world expand in a way that focuses its energy on new characters (like Ana de Armas’ role in Ballerina) while still including John? Amazing!
I can’t wait to finally see John Wick 4 and also what Ballerina has in store for us.
(featured image: Lionsgate)
