The “John Wick” franchise led by actor Keanu Reeves as the titular badass assassin is one of the franchise jewels at Lionsgate as they’re reportedly set to begin shooting “John Wick: Chapter 4” this summer with talk that “John Wick: Chapter 5,” also in the works, that could end up becoming the final film with Reeves.
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And the franchise keeps expanding. They’ve hired “Underworld” director, Len Wiseman to helm the female-led spinoff film “Ballerina,” and there is a series at Starz focusing on the hotel chain “The Continental.” The latter was originally going to see Keanu Reeves cameo as John Wick, but that isn’t happening any longer. In a new Deadline interview, Lionsgate Television chairman Kevin Beggs shed light on the upcoming series, including the major rethinks of the core idea.
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Beggs gives some concrete plot details for the prequel series that will actually now focus on a younger version of Ian McShane‘s Winston and the origin of The Continental hotel in 1970s New York City. In the films, the hotel is considered sacred ground in this universe, and if assassins conduct business in the hotel, there are dire consequences, with some being killed for their indiscretions. What’s being told now sounds like more of a prequel about its origins.
“What we’re exploring in The Continental is the young Winston and how it came to be that he and his team of confederates found their way into this hotel which we have met for the first time in the movie franchise 40 years later,” he told Deadline.
The Lionsgate chief said they’re using HBO’s “Sopranos” as a blueprint, “about a crumbling New York in the 1970s with a garbage strike that has piled up bags of garbage to the third floor of most brownstones, the mafia muscling in on that business which is why in ‘The Sopranos’ he’s in the sanitation business, and other things that are really real as an interesting backdrop to explore the origins of The Continental.”
It’s also explained by Beggs why the show’s timeline won’t allow Keanu to appear as John Wick, “Because we’re way back in time, way back pre-John Wick and even pre-young John Wick, that character is not finding his way into the universe.”
It’s nice to hear Lionsgate Television has finally nailed down what they want to do with the show, and going with a period setting should allow them to explore the world of The High Table and assassin society without having to make sure they’re adding actors from the films which can be a scheduling headache.