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The previously announced John Wick anime project is still on the way, and now it’s apparently a film about how the titular character retired.
Around this time last year, John Wick series director Chad Stahelski shared that an anime project set in the franchise’s world was in the works, and at the time it was planned to be a TV show. Now, though, according to a recent interview from The Hollywood Reporter with Stahelski, it seems that the anime has been retooled slightly. This outing will apparently be a prequel, focused on everyone’s favourite titular assassin, as he sets out on the “impossible task” that allowed him to retire for love. Whether that’s something that needed to be covered in a film or not is up for debate, but still, if done right a John Wick anime could be a pretty fun trip to the cinema.
At the time of the anime’s announcement, Stahelski said they’re doing an anime because “I love Japanese anime so much. To create all the cool stories that anime could achieve better than we could and the TV show to expand our world, we’ll still get our fix, you know what I mean? And we’ll still have all the fun.” Stahelski is clearly trying to get his mitts on as much anime as possible, as he’s also been overseeing the action sequences in the upcoming Shinichiro Watanabe-directed series Lazarus, Watanabe best known for creating Cowboy Bebop, so I’m expecting some strong fight scenes from that one.
Stahelski also spoke of a possible John Wick 5, though didn’t necessarily commit to anything coming that way, saying, “is there an opportunity to do [John Wick 5]? Of course, there is, whether it’s for money or for creativity. Jesus, in the last three years, I’ve already had three or four versions of a John Wick 5. They were different ways to crack the story, but it’s almost a mental exercise for me.”
However, to preserve the ending of the fourth film, he did note that it “would not be part of that [John Wick: Chapter 4] storyline. It would not be what you would think it is. As far as [John Wick: Chapter 4], we’ve peaked.”
There’s plenty in the works for John Wick in any case, as there’s a sequel TV series on the way, alongside that Ballerina spin-off due out next year.