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John Wickcelebrates its 10th anniversary this week, a decade after it changed modern cinema.
“I don’t think we saw it as a franchise when we first got it.
I think we were really just excited to get a chance to sit in the director’s chair.
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And it was just great to now finally have a movie that we call our own.
And so we laid it all on the line,“David Leitchtell us.
There was no looking far ahead during production onJohn Wick.
Cover art by Saiful Creation
It was about surviving while learning on the job.
We wrapped, Dave and I went running for the hills.
We thought we were done.”
Chad Stahelski, Keanu Reeves, and David Leitch on the set of the first John Wick movie.
We were very impressed with that, but we were just in this massive state of depression.
We’re kind of like, “Oh, well, we learned a lot.
What are you going to do?
We were too weird, but at least we made what we wanted to make.”
There’s a little bit of pride in that.
It was the same for everyone involved.
“None” is the word Executive Producer Erica Lee tells us in echoing Chad’s sentiment.
“When we were making the first movie, we did it independently.
They never directed together, so there were so many factors.
We had no distribution.
So, just sort of making it to the finish line of John Wick was a feat in itself.
And then to be honest, we didn’t really know what we had.
I remember screening it for buyers and almost all the distributors walked out.
We certainly had no idea until later in the process.
Lionsgate ended up buying the movie for domestic distribution.
We showed it to them in July.
They were like, “Oh, we have no Saw coming out this year.
Let’s put it out in October.”
Kind of arbitrary decisions.
“Every studio in town saw it and they passed,“Leitch tells us separately.
“And we showed it at Fantastic Fest.
Lionsgate, on a lark said, ‘Okay, let’s just see what we got here.’
And it blew the roof off and they’re like, ‘Holy shit.
We have this movie we didn’t realize that everyone would love.’
It happened in six weeks.”
And we sort of had no idea.
We never saw that coming.
We had no plan.
So it was a while.”
EveryJohn Wickmovie has made more at the box office than its predecessor.
David Leitch: Hindsight’s 20/20.
I don’t know.
I think there’s a lot to learn.
There’s a good story.
When you’re an action director, you don’t get to post the movie.
But sometimes less is more and I think we learned that in the editorial suite in Wick.
Our editor, Elisabet Ronaldsdottir, was amazing.
She kept distilling the movie.
“You need less, just a little bit less.
This movie’s visual.
You’re going to do some nice elegant visual storytelling.
You don’t need that line of dialogue.
You don’t need this.
This can work with a look.”
And all of that was a great learning process for the future.
“There’s about a million things I woulda, coulda, shoulda.
I’m also a bit of a realist in a really pragmatic sense,“adds Chad Stahelski.
“If I could go back and change anything, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here.
John Wick is the first entry in the action-thriller franchise directed by Chad Stahelski and starring Keanu Reeves. Retired hitman John is brought back into the field when the dog his recently deceased life left him is murdered. Full of rage and equipped with unparalleled combat skills, John begins to track down the ones responsible for the act of violence and lays waste to any who dare to cross his path, sending panic throughout the criminal underworld.
Dave and I survived through the arrogance of ignorance.
If we had known more, we probably would’ve made different decisions.
I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have done too many.”
As a director, it’s very important.
Me and my other directing friends, we call it chasing the dragon.
How do you know how to do it the next time?
I just go with my gut, literally 100%.
I’ll hear, I’ll go, “Hey, man, that’s a great idea.
That’s a great idea.”
Yeah, that’d be the main thing I’d push if I could give a little advice.
David Leitch: The movie was a challenge, I’m not going to lie.
I just felt like that was going to be a special moment.
And so it was really the first time we got to play with that stuff.
This is the essence of the action style.”
Chad Stahelski: Oh, the first John Wick.
I think it hits you the first day.
You step on set.
You’re the director.
It’s not about the stress or anything.
It’s about that moment and you’re trying to be super fuckin' cool.
We’re using this thing,” and it does hit you.
That’s a little daunting.
Then it wasn’t until … there was two big things.
The very first fight scene in his house, the first time you see the Gun Fu stuff.
I remember thinking at the end.
I was already chopping it or cutting it in my head.
I’m like, “We got it.
If I think it’s cool, it’s going to be cool.
Trust me, it’s going to be cool.”
There’s a lot of people watching, being very concerned about how this is going to work.
This is the one that the movie hinges on.
Did we nail it or make it too goofy?”
We’re good.”
I had lost the plot.
So I think there’s a lot of moments like that along the way.
Chad Stahelski: It’s Derek Kolstad’s grandfather’s name.
He wrote in his grandpa, who we really respect.
You’d have to ask Derek the actual story.
Derek just told me a little bit about his grandpa.
We had very similar Polish grandfathers, so we would talk about their etiquette and their jot down.
We thought that was super cool.
A-list star Keanu Reeves has maintained and broken many impressive records.
However, there’s one curious trend the actor continues to this day.
“There’s nothing wrong with the name Scorn.
For whatever reason, John Wick sounded cooler to us.
Scorn felt sort of like a bad horror movie.
We’re going to do an internal Thunder Road pool.
Whoever comes with the best title wins lunch.
No one came up with anything.
Basil was like, “Why don’t we just call it John Wick?
That’s the name of the lead character.”
So arbitrary decisions that are now cemented in pop culture.
Which John Wick Characters Are Really Dead?
Chad Stahelski: Oh, my God, so many.
John Leguizamo I love and we brought back in the second one.
Jimmy, I know we brought back in the second one.
I fuckin' love Jimmy, the cop.
He’s such a good actor, such a great guy too.
Oh, David Patrick Kelly is Charlie.
We did bring him back in the second one, but I cut his scene.
It just didn’t fit.
We were stuck with a really serious runtime problem with No.
2, and it’s just me being a goofy director.
I love that character.
“If I was going to bring someone, I tried in No.
I’d bring back Common, and I’d bring back Halle Berry in a second.
I’d bring back Common, and I’d bring back Halle Berry in a second.
And I don’t have any regrets.
The story needed it.
And look how we left John Wick 4, I think we could bring John Wick back.
Lee continues, telling us that she really would love to bring back Halle Berry as well.
David Leitch: It was important to us, maybe more important to Chad.
I think, and this is no dig, it’s like we all had different sensibilities.
And that was cool.
And I think that’s amazing because it added sort of another layer to the choreography.
Great choreography comes from giving yourself problems.
You want to create a fight scene that’s compelling?
Give your choreography team the problems to solve, and you’ll find such great, interesting moments.
And that was just another dimension to put into the choreography.
We didn’t want to be 100% realistic, but we didn’t want to be fantasy.
We just made a little chart, like we’re counting bullets.
We’re going to do close-quarters.
Bullets go through car doors, they go through walls.
Not to get too crazy, but two to the heart, one to the head.
We’re going to do some tactical stuff.
We know we’re having a little bit of fun there.
Between all four movies, it’s in the high six figures, the number of times he shot.
Where we shot was very specific.
We’d shoot up at Taran Butler’s place, which is a three-gun champion guy.
You have to be very self-aware of it.”
Chad Stahelski: I think Keanu was literally counting most of the time.
Especially if we were cutting all over the place, it would’ve been much harder.
John Wick movies raised the bar again for the action genre and have been influential.
How do you feel about the franchise’s impact on the genre and industry as a whole?
We just put it together.
It’s still the same fuckin' cookie, though, isn’t it?
I like lighting, so I stress more on, with Dan Laustsen, lighting.
I like studio composition, so I’m using the dolly and crane more than handheld.
Is that anything groundbreaking?
I just think people, it’s like fashion.
They didn’t invent the straight leg or the bell bottom, just they brought it back.
I brought back a certain look to action that people gravitated to because of the trend.
Would you ask the same thing of Paul Greengrass with Bourne?
Did he invent the shaky cam?
Did he invent close-quarter combat or kali, arnis, or sikaran?
Did he invent the snap zoom into a phone call?
We look at ourselves like, look, we do jiu-jitsu, aikido, close-quarter gun work.
Anybody that’s military police or a competitive shooter, they count bullets too.
It just wasn’t done in the movies because it was kind of a pain in the ass.
We didn’t really invent or come up with anything.
David Leitch: Oh, I feel so proud.
And then to watch where Chad has taken it.
Chad is a brilliant choreographer and action designer and he has such a brilliant mind for action.
It’s really beautiful to see what he’s done with the sequences in the sequels.
They’re really incredible films.
Producer Erica Lee shares a different perspective, comparingWickto other action movies of the time a decade ago.
Chad Stahelski: I get asked that a lot.
God, so many others, all from the ’70s.
It was like, okay.
From The Wild Bunch to Bullitt to Scorsese to what Pacino was doing.
There’s so many.
It’s all the way back to John Ford in Stagecoach, right?
You’re looking at Westerns, you’re looking at French cinema from Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge.
You’re looking at, you know, insert name of any … Street Fighter, Kung Fu.
I pick Korean films all the time.
I’ve got probably 10,000 action movies in my head, but on top of another 5,000 anime manga.
If you look in my office, it’s nothing but books and DVDs.
It’s like I don’t know if I can take any credit.
And I think we tapped into magic in a bottle, no doubt.
And Keanu was the perfect casting.
Watching the lore expand with the sequel movies has been fascinating.
What were some of the original ground rules for the Assassin’s Guild and The Continental?
David Leitch: Well, I think we kept it vague.
And I don’t even know if Derek knew what we were inspired by.
John Wick, this underworld.
I think it might’ve been more literal in Derek’s mind, maybe not.
But we tried to keep it gray so we could go somewhere.
And we also felt like it was fun that you didn’t know all of it.
You knew hints of this underworld, but you didn’t all of it.
And unknowingly, that obviously set up the sequels in a really great way.
It’s like, no, we loved that part of John Wick.
They’re like, “Oh, you did?”
They really loved this sort of underworld hiding in plain sight that we wanted to create.
When it came toJohn Wick: Chapter 2the mission changed.
They gave us a pretty long leash,“Stahelski explains.
“And then it was like Keanu and I got back together and went, ‘Ooh.
Well, we really don’t know what to do.’
We got together with Derek Kolstad, and No.
2 is when we figured things out.”
We came up with the idea that there’s a Continental in every city.
Derek had come up with the idea of markers.
Then I was like, “Well, fuck it.
I don’t know about Keanu, but for me, I’m the most proud of No.
2 because that’s where we cracked the code.
After that, it became not easier, but it became much more interesting.
We knew we didn’t have to put ourselves in a box.
We could do anything.
Bulletproof suits, dogs, ninjas, it didn’t matter.
We could do anything.
We were trying to steal from the best of Bond or Mission or anything else like that.
We had free reign and no original IP to adhere to.
That’s when we just felt incredibly free.
That’s why I think Keanu and I stayed with the franchise so long.
It’s 100% ours, and it was 100% unlimited.
As for the rules for assassins and the value of a gold coin?
Nothing’s for free and there’s always a cost, no matter what the price is.
Might not be a price, but there is a cost.
That’s all you have to know.
There’s always something.
As far as a gold coin, we never looked at it.
A gold coin is a membership card.
It doesn’t matter.
Some people were giving us shit about that after the first one.
It was like, “Well, is it worth a drink?
Is it worth this?”
It is you are showing it as, “I’m part of the club.
I’m above monetary value.”
This is the new monetary payment.
A coin can be worth a drink to somebody important.
As you saw in the first one, I think it was 13 bodies and he had 13 coins.
That’s the price.
It’s more about I guess it’s like an IOU.
It could be an act of faith, an act of membership, an act of service or something.
Erica Lee: That’s a great question.
The gold coin, I don’t think we ever put a monetary allotment to it.
I think it was more just like if you know, you know.
If you had one, it was like the golden ticket in.
We should do that though.
If we make John Wick 5, we should definitely do.
We’ve created a lot of lore.
But what’s fun about the continentals, we always get asked, we leave so much untold.
And so the gold coins, everyone loves the lore of that.
Chad Stahelski: In the true story of things, John Wick 1 was great.
Keanu had called up and said, “Hey, Lionsgate just called me.
They want to do another one.”
I was like, “Really, like that?”
He’s like, “Yeah.”
David Leitch: I think Keanu always approaches the character with discipline.
But knowing Keanu and from my experience, I’m sure the approach is the same.
Erica Lee: That’s a good question.
He’s deeply involved from script level.
He came up with the idea of the markers.
And so I think he’s the most invested actor I’ve ever worked with.
But he’s consistent.
Over all the movies, he is an amazing partner, a great actor who’s so prepared.
He is up for anything and he gives it his all.
So that’s consistent.
I mean, look.
In retrospect, it’s very easy, and I get asked these a lot.
It’s a natural assumption that there was a master plan.
Maybe they have the big crossboard with the 20-year vision.
We had the six-month vision, how to survive and get through the movie at hand.
It was, “Survive this, make it through.
We’re almost out of money, end it.”
There wasn’t a day after we wrapped that we’re like, “We’re done.
Love you all.”
It’s always like a year later we decided to do another one, and there was no plan.
There was no far-reaching expectations.
We were done, done.
Now when we go back into it, it’s like, “Oh, oh.”
It’s weird to look back, you know what I mean?
See you in a year.”
What would be fun to see?”
That’s how we approached it.
It’s like, “What would the audience enjoy seeing Keanu do?”
Well, they want to see him own it.
They want to see him be responsible for his actions.
You want to see him own that, but you also see him want to kick a little ass.
He approaches it from a very internal point of view, I guess.
Also, we all get it.
We want to make movies that are fun for people to come and watch.
So, what was the toughest John Wick action scene?
Erica Lee: Oh, man, that’s a hard question.
I think it’s preference probably, I mean, shooting in France was very challenging.
And also shooting the Halle Berry dog sequence in Morocco was one of the more challenging ones.
I mean, there’s always logistics; horses in New York and the permits.
And so every movie has its own really specific thing.
So there were fish everywhere, and then there were cats everywhere.
And the dogs who had been shipped in from the U.S. and Canada, there’s four dogs.
And then there were cats everywhere and dead fish everywhere, and the dogs were getting very distracted.
And I just remember our call time that day was like 2:30 in the morning.
Halle was a true champion.
We had pushed the shoot because she had broken her ribs.
It was just sort of mayhem in general.
I say that was one of the more challenging kind of sections.
But I mean, there’s honestly so many.
And I can say that the stairfall in Wick 4 is a work of art.
It is just one of the most impressive feats of physical stunt performance that I’ve seen.
Sometimes it doesn’t always work as intended, even within schedules and budgets.
In the firstJohn Wickthe car scene for instance cost the production a day or two.
We had to fight for that stuff.
And normally that size movie, you wouldn’t have been able to do it.
Erica Lee: Some things didn’t come out as good as we wanted them to be.
What’s interesting is the motorcycle sequence in 3 with the swords.
“And I hope to see more of Keanu.”
As an audience member on Four, I loved it.
I think they made the right choice.
If it was the right story and I’m the right person to tell it, sure.
“That’s a great question,“ponders Erica Lee when asked the same question.
“I mean, obviously I’d love more spinoffs and TV shows and exploring all different arenas.”
I think we set this bar so high in 4 and we left it all on the table.
I say we burn the house down when we make the movie.
So that’s what I’m most hopeful and excited and anxious about.
I think that that’s subjective.
Maybe there’s nothing in that grave.
I’m a producer, so we’re hopeful for more.
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