Ballerina is finally hitting screens this weekend and our Editor-in-Chief, Chris Bumbray, was happy to report that despite a delay for lengthy reshoots, the film is still a lot of fun. He says in his review, “Ballerina is one of the more satisfying franchise spin-offs in recent memory. In this era of IP, every studio is desperate to max out the potential sequels and spinoffs their key franchises can handle, and Lionsgate has a whole slew planned around the John Wick franchise. Yet, what makes Ballerina different is that this doesn’t feel like much of a derivative of the franchise.”
Ballerina joins The Continental in attempting to expand the John Wick universe and Lionsgate had also announced that Donnie Yen would be reprising his role from Chapter 4 as Caine in a solo outing. While Reeves was brought in to merge Ballerina with Wick‘s world, franchise director Chad Stahelski says Caine will stand on its own without Wick. He tells The Hollywood Reporter,
The Donnie Yen spinoff doesn’t have the John Wick character. It’s got Donnie Yen and it’s an ode to kung fu movies. If John Wick 1 was about Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, this is about Chow Yun-fat, John Woo and Wong Kar-wai. So I think that one is a little easier to get it across to audiences because it’s in a sub-genre of what we love.”
During the talk about the future of the franchise, Stahelski is asked if a John Wick 5 is still a possibility. The director answered, “The studio would very much will it into existence, I’m sure, at some point. Look, they’ve been great and they’ve asked us to really try and we have a really good couple of ideas and we’re going to try.” However, Stahelski had also claimed that part 5 would not retcon the end of part 4 and Wick would still be dead. Now that some time has passed, he’s asked if he’s been able to crack a plot with that as a factor. The director answered, “I’m not going to lie to you, it’s a bit of a conundrum. Me and Mike Finch — the writer on 4 who’s also writing 5 — we’ve got a pretty good story that I think is cool. Once we have a 50-page book, and if we’re feeling it, we’ll sit with Keanu and shape this thing. Look, everybody seems to want it. It’s a matter of whether we crack it. We’re actively working on it. It’s just … is it going to be satisfying?”
