Although the success of the John Wick franchise can mostly be attributed to Keanu Reeves, it wouldn’t exist without screenwriter Derek Kolstad, who wrote the first movie and created the title character, who was named after his maternal grandfather. Kolstad has continued to work on the movie’s sequels, but after his script for the third movie was rewritten by a couple of studio-appointed writers, Kolstad has revealed that he won’t be involved with the fourth and fifth movies at all.
Lionsgate announced last August that the fourth and fifth John Wick movies would shoot back-to-back, with the fourth movie’s 2021 release date getting pushed back to 2022 to accommodate the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent interview with Collider, when asked how far along he was with the scripts for the new John Wick movies, Kolstad surprisingly replied, “I’m actually not involved in 4 and 5.”
And what’s more, it wasn’t Kolstad’s call. “No, it wasn’t my decision,” he explained. “The third one, I shared the credit with any number of people. [Lionsgate] didn’t have to come back to me, and so they didn’t.” The screenwriter clarified that he’s still on good terms with directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch and that he wishes the franchise the best: “It’s personal, so I’m never going to talk sh*t about John Wick. I want this thing to survive and thrive… I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m excited to see.”
While his involvement with the mainline John Wick movies is coming to an end, Kolstad did tease that there are going to be significant announcements on the way regarding the long-awaited Continental-centric TV series set in the in-universe hotel that accommodates contract killers. Kolstad said the show will be about “how deep the world goes,” including the origin stories of a few key supporting characters from the John Wick films. There’s also a spin-off movie in development titled Ballerina that will follow a young female assassin’s quest to avenge her murdered family. Live Free or Die Hard director Len Wiseman is signed on to helm that one.
Although he won’t be writing another John Wick movie any time soon, Kolstad is hardly struggling for work. He wrote a couple of episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier that’ll air in the next few weeks and he’s been tapped to write screen adaptations of the Hitman, Just Cause, and Splinter Cell video game series. His latest movie, Nobody, stars Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk as a mild-mannered suburbanite who proves himself to be a John Wick-style badass when his family is terrorized by criminals.
As long as Reeves is still playing Baba Yaga and director Stahelski remains at the helm, then there’s still hope for the John Wick franchise. But nobody understands this character better than his creator, so Lionsgate has left the next two movies with big shoes to fill by firing the series’ architect.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is scheduled to be released on May 27, 2022.
Source: Collider
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