It has been a decade since Keanu Reeves’ John Wick shot his way into the hearts of filmgoers, and Lionsgate is pulling out all the stops to make sure it is celebrated properly. ComingSoon spoke with John Wick directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch about the making of the film, its theatrical rerelease, and its legacy.
The original 2014 film will be back in theaters on November 3 and 6, allowing many fans to see it in its intended setting for the first time, and is getting an Amazon-exclusive Titans of Cult SteelBook release on November 5, which comes with several collectibles and marks the first time it will be available in Dolby Vision. The John Wick Experience is also opening later this year in Las Vegas, which “blends immersive escape experiences and highly themed cinematic environments to create an interactive journey that transcends reality.”
“I want to make an action movie that you want to see it in a theater.”
“We got to create something that people were just so excited about. It is sort of mind blowing that here we are 10 years later, four films,” said Leitch, who was humbled and grateful to see the film back in theaters. “Chad has done an incredible job with a franchise moving forward. I’m really excited for people to see it on the big screen who haven’t, and I’m excited that Lionsgate really took the time to celebrate it.”
For Stahelski, the theatrical vision is important as it was at the core of the series.
“I’m a big theater guy. Like if I’m seeing an action movie or something with good visuals and great music, I wanna see it in a theater. It was Keanu’s main intention. One of the first things he said to me [was], ‘I want to make an action movie that you want to see it in a theater.’ Keanu was one of the biggest proponents for theatrical releases I’ve ever met in the industry. As far as being a very internal and introverted guy, he likes the movie experience. He wants to sit in an audience and experience the movie with people.”
Setting the tone with a home invasion
Both Leitch and Stahelski still love the home invasion scene that introduces the film audience to the brand of action that Wick would become famous for.
“I really like the first home invasion, you know, when the guys sneak up to the house, and it’s the first time we kind of see gun fu,” said Leitch.” I remember being at Fantastic Fest when that first happened, and people just losing their minds over that first piece of choreography. That was a really, really great feeling, you know?”
That scene also features one of Stahelski’s favorite kills in the first Wick movie.
“I like the guy in the hallway in the very first fight that he pushes the knife down into. That was our buddy Danny Hernandez. I thought that was a great little fun piece. Other than that, I’d probably say [my favorite kill is] shooting the guy over the roof of the car as he hits him. It’s always pretty fun.
Keanu Reeves is more than the Baba Yaga
From the stoic delivery to the incredible action scenes, John Wick is one of the greatest film characters to be created in the 2000s. He’s also the latest iconic character for Reeves, who has been an action star for decades and constantly found ways to reinvent his career and be more than just “Neo” or “Ted.”
We had worked with Keanu quite a bit as stunt performers and choreographers and then as second unit directors, action directors. So the fact that he was already attached to the movie when we got our hands on the script, it was actually really exciting because we knew what we could get out of him and what he would bring to the table physically,” explained Leitch of the collaboration. We had so many ideas of the action we wanted to do as choreographers in coming up. With this movie, this small of budget, we wouldn’t have a lot of time. You really needed someone who could had the chops. So it was really sort of a perfect storm that Keanu was attached, as the script lent itself to the action that we wanted to do, and we got the opportunity to direct it.”
While Reeves’ professionalism and experience as an action star allowed him to execute the tightly choreographed scenes, it wasn’t all easy. Leitch says there were two difficult moments to film, one of which was the ending sequence.
“The rain scene at the end was pretty insane because we didn’t have the ability to heat the rain. It was so cold. Keanu and Michael [Nyqvist] were doing most of their action and they were just freezing. That was a challenging one.
“There was another day, and there’s no stopping on a movie like this because you don’t really have a studio to say, ‘Hey, we need another day,’ or there’s an insurance day. It’s an independent film. There’s another day where Keanu had the flu really bad, and he had to fight through. We were in the club scene and he was just sick as a dog. He fought through the choreography. I don’t even know how he did it. He’s such a champ. It’s insane.”
Reeves’ now-iconic performance as the Baba Yaga is just as famous for his line delivery as the “gun fu” that he used in the fight scenes. Stahelski explained that they wanted a blend of Japanese samurai films, such as Zatoichi and Kurosawa movies, and then soft-spoken Western heroes like Clint Eastwood portrayed.
“[Wick] only speaks when he has to, and I think that’s very Keanu,” Stahelski said. “So he brought a lot of that. He would wipe out his dialogue or rephrase to make it as efficient as possible. We also kind of knew what kind of hero we wanted to see because that kind of hero wasn’t very prevalent in cinema at the time we were making this. So we wanted more of the stoic seventies kind of vibe. Like how Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and Clint Eastwood had been. Keanu, we had those talks, and he just kind of nailed it.
“Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back”
Perhaps the most iconic sequence in the first film is when Wick is tied up to a chair and it seems that he’s met his end at the hands of Michael Nyqvist’s Viggo. However, he finds a will to live and fight back and delivers an incredible speech. Reeves screams, “People keep asking if I’m back, and I haven’t really had an answer. But now, yeah, I’m thinkin’ I’m back!”
While it’s an incredible sequence, it isn’t actually how the directors originally intended the scene to be.
“We had a much bigger vision for that, but again, we were running out of time and money. So we got this old bank outside of New York that was being refurbished. It was still in the middle of being refurbished. We’re like, ‘Oh, this is a cool place.’ We had no time to dress it. We’re like, ‘Lay down some plastic. We’ll make it a construction site.’ Jon Sela, our DP at the time, did some cool lighting,” Stahelski explained.
“We hadn’t really had much of a chance to rehearse with Michael Nyqvist and Keanu all tied to the chair. We sat and figured out how Willam Defoe’s character was gonna save the day because we didn’t have him that day, so we had to make it a sniper shot. We were going through it, and we had done almost 8-10 takes. Dave and I were listening, it was more [subdued] as, ‘Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back. Better let me go.’
“We’re kind of there. Then Keanu stops, and he goes, ‘What?’ We’re like, ‘Well, I don’t know. Would you do one more?’ and he is like, ‘Okay, sure. Absolutely. What do you need?’ We’re like, ‘Can you just go?’ He’s like, ‘You want me to go crazy?’ We’re like, ‘If you don’t mind.’ He’s like, ‘You want crazy crazy?’ We’re like, ‘Yeah, throw it away. Go big.’ He’s like, ‘I’m gonna go big.’ That’s the take in the movie. He just goes. He’s screaming. The [prior] take was not even half that, and he just goes big. Dave, Basil [Iwanyk], the producer, we all look at each other and go, ‘Yep, that’s it.’ We even knew that was in the trailer. We just knew that was it.”
That pivotal John Wick scene has become a favorite online, as both a reaction gif and for memes. “[The reaction] was great. It was surprising,” said Leitch of Wick’s permanence online. “I think we were both shocked. We knew we’d put our heart and soul into this and we’d thought we created something that people would enjoy. But I don’t know if we ever thought we created, together, all of us, and I think Keanu included, that we created an iconic character. It’s still a little bit mind blowing that he exists now in sort of pop culture as a common thing.”
John Wick’s early cuts weren’t well received
Ten years later, the identity of the John Wick franchise is well-established. If you go back and watch all four movies in a row, it’s remarkably consistent in tone. However, while the directing duo knew what they wanted, it wasn’t easy to achieve in their directorial debuts.
“The end product is what you see, like, and we’re very proud of it. We did not quite aim for that tone. We know we wanted kind of an anime-pushed reality, hyper-real tone. We know we were going for something like that. How to get it? We weren’t really sure. So, having Keanu and the way Keanu performs the character of being a little stoic and less is more kind of thing. Honestly, we had an initial intention, and coming from a second-unit world when you do a lot of additional photography or cleanup jobs, you always find out things that are usually wrong with films; by the time we had gotten to them, it was pacing or your tone,” explained Stahelski.
“You’re always trying to find pacing or your tone, and then there’s logic from, but it was always tone. That’s why you see certain movies and it feels like it’s three different movies all stitched together. So we were very aware of that, but it didn’t stop us from messing up. I remember being in post on that going, ‘Is this a thriller? Is it an action movie? Or is this an anime? Is this too ridiculous? He’s holding a dead stuffed puppy. He’s killing 80 people. I think we jumped the shark.’
“One of our first little friends and family screenings went horribly. It was a lot of our friends tapping us on the shoulders, going, “Yeah… Good work.” It didn’t land really well. It was probably halfway through editorial that we started really condensing. It was just one day, we put the right music on, and we found the kind of tone. We changed a few things and really shaved down the opening and really kind of focused on Keanu and just kind of landed on the tone and it kind of worked.
“I wish I could tell you we were creative geniuses with a vision from the start, but it was a lot of around in the dark and trying a lot of different editorial scenarios and really searching for the tone that we had in our heads that we wanted. We just weren’t schooled enough or technically advanced enough to really find it [at first]. Whether it’s by luck, skill, or chance, we found the tone we were looking for, and it worked.”
“That was a great learning process for Chad and I,” Leitch explained of the post-production process. “Because as many big movies as we’d done the action on, at the end of the day, you shoot the action as a second-unit director, but you hand it over to the first-unit director, and you never really sit in the edit room, and have to make those bold choices and carve out a performance. You’re just handing them the material and you’re like, ‘There you go.’ So this time it was like, it’s all on you. I think it was a huge learning curve.
“We had a great mentor in that, Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir was our editor, and she was a very experienced editor. She came in and helped us make choices, challenged us as directors to be like, ‘Maybe you don’t need that scene. Maybe this is better. It’s better to let this breathe, or sometimes less is more.’ I think as we tightened the movie and she whittled it down, we found the essence.”
“He’s killing 80 people. I think we jumped the shark.”
Leitch also credits the script written by Derek Kolstad for helping guide the minimalist nature.
“When we look at some of our favorite films, like westerns, a Sergio Leone Western, they’re so minimal in nature, but they’re doing so much. We were trying to take that approach with what we had, and some of it came from the script. I thought Derek had a really elegant, sort of minimalist approach to the script that allowed us to put our imprint on it. Some of it came from the collaboration with our cinematographer, Jonathan Sela, who understood what we were trying to accomplish and really helped us create a non-verbal storytelling, like a picture’s worth a thousand words. That’s what’s great about the first act. There’s not a lot of dialogue really, but you’re really getting everything you need to know about this guy,” said Leitch.
“We’re setting the emotional hook with the dog, with the letter from the wife, the funeral. It’s all imagery, right? So that lent itself too to the box that we were constrained in. We had a lot of experience and been on a lot of sets with a lot of directors and mentored by a lot of great people. I think we knew we had an approach that we were saying, ‘This price is challenging, but it also offers us an opportunity to do something that is in the style of a modern-day Western.’”
Making magic with great actors
While the script guided Stahelski and Leitch, many signature moments and small touches came from the minds of the film’s talented cast. Leitch praised working with Willem Dafoe as it helped them learn that great actors come with a lot of ideas.
“They’re taking care of a character at a level that you don’t really have the bandwidth for as a director. [Dafoe] really came in with some interesting character ideas for that character, and watching him work was wow. It was like acting school,” admitted Leitch. “I remember the scene where he is meeting Michael at the door, and he wants to be juicing. It was just supposed to be [that they were] gonna meet for breakfast or whatever. He went, ‘No, I wanna be in my bathrobe, and I wanna have a juice.’ Adding these interesting character things to him was always so compelling.”
Stahelski showered praise on the late Lance Reddick, who was one of the first people that was cast in John Wick besides Reeves.
“[Reddick] was in New York at the time. We asked him to come down and talk to us. We had done one quick call. He shows up. He is like, ‘I got a brown suit. I got a blue suit. I think this is the character, and by the way, I’m gonna have a Senegalese accent from Africa. This is my character. His backstory was…’ He had it all,” gushed Stahelski.
“Pitching the movie to other cast members was a little tricky. If I’m pitching to you, ‘Well, I got this action movie. It’s Keanu Reeves. He kills 80 people ’cause of a puppy, and there’s this weird underworld, like a Greek myth.’ It’s not an easy sell with two first-time directors. Some people got it, some didn’t. The people that are in the movie, they actually got it. Lance didn’t even [question it], he was just like, ‘Yeah. I totally get it. I’m Charon, the ferryman. I’m from mytholog. I’m the gatekeeper. I get it.’ We’re like, ‘Oh, that was easy.’
“That’s why he is in every movie. He was our first anchor to it, and then Ian McShane, Willem Dafoe, and all the cast that we had put together since. Plus the gentlest guy you’ll ever wanna meet. Professional, always on time, always got the scene. It’s funny, him and Ian McShane together, whenever they were working, they’d always be on set. They never went. They stayed on set the entire day, talked to the crew, knew everybody’s name. They wanted to see the making of it, whether they’re in the scene or not. They enjoyed watching us make John Wicks. So, if you want to have a good day on set, invite Lance and McShane, and you had a really good day on set. There’s just a good vibe when the cast is into it, and it’s not just a job, it’s not a gig, it is an experience that they don’t wanna miss out on. You’re making magic at that point.”
Two smaller scenes that have stood the test of time involve pro wrestler Kevin Nash and veteran actor Thomas Sadoski. As for Nash, he was a friend of one of the producers and was a great choice to play a Russian bodyguard who used to be friends with Wick.
“Kevin had that really, really dry read. Like he didn’t try to be tough,” Stahelski explained. “He was just this big imposing guy as well. You could see him like, he actually does this great little thing every time I watch it. He kind of swallows, and he just goes, “Oh, Mr. Wick. Thank you, Mr. Wick.” We had overwritten the scene, and him and Keannu just ripped it to those just really tight little three or four lines. We got done and we literally shot that. The sun was coming up. We just blacked out this little little scaffolding thing in New York and shot it in like an hour.”
One of Stahelski’s favorite scenes is with Sadoski, who he was a fan of watching on The Newsroom. However, how Sadoski and Reeves played off each other surprised the directors as Sadoski’s Jimmy the cop responded to a “noise complaint” after Wick got into a gunfight at his house.
“I had one thing in my head about how he’s gonna play it. Again, the night’s going, you’re trying to make your day and stuff. So we’re blocking the scene, and Keanu comes to the door. We thought Keanu was gonna play it slightly different. Keanu goes to the door, incredibly deadpan serious. He goes, ‘Hey, Jimmy. Noise complaint?’ God bless Tom because he didn’t miss a beat. He’s like, ‘Noise complaint.’ They underplayed so much that we’re like, ‘Okay, cut.’
That was awesome. It was one of those sweet little scenes that in a script it reads like it’s a throwaway. It almost reads like you just gotta get it to get [on with the story]. Instead, it became the pivotal moment where we shift worlds. That’s the scene where we have our cinematographer switch lenses, switch lighting, and switch all that stuff. So now you’re going into the John Wick world now. We’ve changed complete palettes. That became our light switch. So I always remember Jimmy as he’s the guardian of the Wick world.
Paving the way for action directors
Leitch and Stahelski’s success has led to more stuntmen getting chances in Hollywood, such as The Killer’s Game director J.J. Perry, who was a stunt player in John Wick. Perry, who has known them both since the 90s, believes it’s just the start for the community.
“Watching my two bros, my two classmates come up has made me super proud. I wouldn’t have been able to direct my first movie if it wasn’t for Chad Stahelski,” said Perry. “So I’m super grateful for him and them, and I’m super excited to see what they do next. I think that the glass ceiling is about to break because there are a lot of young men and women out there who come from our background and can do this job very efficiently. The way that visual effects directors were huge in the early millennium is the way that I think action directors are gonna start coming out now.”
While the John Wick directors might have kickstarted the current trend, Leitch made sure to pay respect to the past stuntmen who found success behind the camera.
“Well, I think what’s really satisfying is you letting the world sort of see the storytellers that the stunt community is. Yeah, we’re on the forefront of this movement,” said Leitch. Right now, currently, there are people in the past like Jackie Chan who came from stunts and became a great storyteller, and Hal Needham and the others who were stuntmen who became directors and then the original filmmakers, from Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, all stunt performers that were cinema’s first great directors. It’s really fun to see this next generation be accepted as the storytellers that they deserve to be.”
Stahelski continues to improve
While Stahelski is proud of the first John Wick movie, he admits that the perfectionist in him would do things very differently now.
“Look, I’d reshoot half the movie if I could, knowing what I know now about lenses and lighting and how to change it,” admitted Stahelski. “But at the end of the day, I go back and I’ve watched it fairly recently, I’m pretty proud of it. I try to be as practical as I can. At that time, I know that’s the best we could do because we didn’t give up. I know the amount of effort, stress, and time we put in at that time. I feel like we weren’t held back. I feel like we were given a fair go and I felt like that was the best we could do compared to what we have learned and know now.
“I love the first movie, but hopefully, you look at John Wick and John Wick 4 and go, “Well, that guy kind of learned something. You got a little better.” I hope to be efficient or to bring a more luscious sense of style or color or some kind of cohesive nature or thematics that somehow punch up. I’d hate for you to watch the same four movies. I’d like to see 1, 2, 3, 4, and hopefully everything we do next to be an expansion in a positive way forward.”