Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, it was looking as though we’d get a possible double dose of Keanu Reeves with both a fourth “The Matrix” film and “John Wick: Chapter 4” scheduled for the same release date – May 21st 2021.
Lana Wachowski’s film was to shoot first and actually lodged several weeks of production under its belt before filming was halted and much of the industry was shut down with shoots and film releases delayed. At present though, both films remain scheduled for that date.
Chad Stahelski, who is working as both director on “John Wick: Chapter 4” and helping out on “The Matrix 4,” recently spoke with Collider and revealed that Keanu Reeves was ready call it quits on the franchise – only to then quickly change his mind:
“We finished the third one and Keanu and I are like, ‘Okay, time to move on. Let’s go do a romantic comedy or something. We’re good. Then we just kinda met each other when we were doing the publicity tour and I think we were in Japan, and Keanu goes, ‘I think I got one more left in me,’ and we had one idea we didn’t use which we really loved and we have to cut it out of number three [Parabellum], just didn’t have the space for it.
So we’re like, ‘Okay, we’ll do a fourth. That’s gonna be awesome. We’ll make a plan.’ The studios […] went, ‘We totally get what you’re trying to do.’ We submitted an idea or thematic [plan] and it was really big. So, we’re talking about doing a little bit more than a [John Wick 4], or something like that, and trying to develop that. We’ll see how that goes.”
Stahelski also says that they don’t even have a first draft of the script yet, which means not only is it likely to move from its current date but could also be much further off than expected:
“I couldn’t tell you a release date for the next one… We have, I wouldn’t call it a first draft but I’d call it a ‘scriptment’: A written-out story, part outline, part script, part thing. We know where we want to go, we know the thematics. We call it ‘the toy box.’ It’s like a 100-and-something page document, but some of it’s written. It’s a good place to start.
Then we start thinning it out, and then we work with the writers to get the right scenes, and then we start working with Keanu’s dialogue. It’s a very outward-in process for us.
Then, we’ll do the inward-outward process which is about character. So, to answer your question, I’m in a happy place where we are in development. We got, not quite a locked-in first draft, but we’re in a place where we know what we want do and where we want to do it.
Matrix was only four weeks in when this all happened. So, Keanu’s gotta go finish his commitment up on The Matrix, which is a big deal and which I think will probably take him until the end of the year. Then we have to go into our prep mode and the we’ll start.”
The most recent film in the series, last year’s “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” grossed $326 million on a $75 million budget along with receiving rave reviews from critics.
