“John Wick” filmmaker Chad Stahelski still hasn’t settled on his next project as yet. The helmer has multiple options available including the “Ghost of Tsushima” film, a “Rainbow Six” movie, an eventual fifth “John Wick,” and the “Highlander” reboot.
Speaking with Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast yesterday, the filmmaker offered updates on all of those projects and where things stand.
“Rainbow Six,” a follow-up to the Michael B. Jordan-led “Without Remorse” movie based on the Tom Clancy novels and games, seems the least likely as the moment with Stahelski saying: “we’re in a bit of a conundrum right now with developing that obviously with strikes” which suggests it’s still only in the early stages.
“Ghost of Tsushima” he dubs one of his biggest passion projects and the trick with it now is getting people to understand the game’s significance and respecting that:
“This is one of the most beautiful video games ever made, so it’s a challenge to not do less than the guys over at Sucker Punch [game developers] have done.
It’s using all Japanese and all Asian cast for the Mongols and get the rest of the world behind that, that’s a cool thing to do. It doesn’t have to be all subtitled or all English, like there’s a way to express that because I think if anyone knows the game it’s a fantastic story, it’s an incredible myth, it ties into some very specific Japanese mythology, but at the same time its got a story that transcends any kind of nationality.”
It seems to be a toss-up between that or “Highlander” as his next project. In regards to the latter, there’s a very complicated mythology that sprung from the original 1986 film with multiple sequels at various points in the time line, several TV series, novels, comics and more.
Stahelski says that in creating this reboot, he and his creative team are bringing in all that mythology in an effort to create an even more expansive franchise that could, in fact, serve as something of a prequel to the original:
“I think we have some very good elements now. The trick is when you have the tagline ‘there can only be one’, you can’t just kill everybody the first time. I’ll say it for you first, our story engages a lot of the same characters and stuff like that, but we’ve also brought in elements of all the TV shows, and we’re trying to do a bit of a prequel, a setup to The Gathering, so we have room to grow the property.”
Several directors have been attached to the reboot since talk of it began around fifteen years ago, with Stahelski having been linked since way back in 2016.
As for where a fifth “John Wick” film stands, it sounds like it’s possible, but there’s no hurry on it:
“Yeah, Keanu and I have talked. Keanu, if you ask him right now, ‘Would you do John Wick 5?’ He’d be, ‘F—- yeah’. But then he’d look and go, ‘Well, what is it? I have no f—ing idea.’ That’s all. Believe me. It’s not like, ‘We’re going to figure it out today.’ Like, look man, we’re going to do our other stuff for a little bit, but if I was driving in the car or if I was walking the dog and an idea hit me, within 30 seconds I’d be on the phone to Keanu and we’d be riffing.”
“John Wick: Chapter 4” is currently available on digital platforms everywhere.
