John Wick Prequel Promises to Answer the Movies’ Biggest Question

John Wick is now in the works on a new anime prequel, and it’s promising to finally explore the “impossible task” that started out John Wick on his very long revenge journey in the first place. Although John Wick‘s story was told over the course of four successful feature films, the franchise has been such a hit with audiences that it’s sparked all sorts of spinoffs and other projects released in the time since. The Keanu Reeves starring project is even making its debut in the world of anime soon, and franchise overseer Chad Stahelski offered a juicy update as to what’s coming in the new anime project.

Stahelski previously teased development on a new John Wick anime project in the past, but was not very revealing in terms of concrete details for the project. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stahelski confirmed that the new anime is “knee-deep in development” and will serve as a prequel to the feature films. This new anime is also being touted by Stahelski as a feature anime project, and will be related to the impossible task Wick had accomplished that allowed him to retire before the events of the movies.

What Is John Wick’s New Anime?

“Right now, we’re knee-deep in development on a feature anime about John Wick,” Stahelski revealed about the new anime project. “It’s a prequel to the movies, which is awesome. It’s fun that it’s in a different medium.” When asked if it was the impossible task that eventually allowed Wick to retire, Stahelski revealed, “Ish. You’re pretty right on, but it’s animated fun. It’s meant to be fun. Some of the prequels and sequels that you see in other franchises, we’re not meant to be built that way. We just want to have fun. We want to have fun with the Wick world, but we’ve already capped it on one end [with John Wick: Chapter 4], so let’s go back and use a different medium.”

In terms of exploring more of John Wick‘s story through this new anime, Stahelski emphasized that it’s mainly a way to dive further into the universe without ruining the image of what came before, “…To keep churning out episodes of John Wick’s adventures seems a little false to us, but to explore different aspects of the world and different aspects of John Wick before the films and through a different medium, whether it’s anime or TV, that feels fun. We can be a little bit more crazy and nutty in the anime, and we can be a lot more explicit in our storytelling and world building on the TV show. So those are exciting to us without seeming repetitive, and that’s where we’re putting our energies right now.”

What Is John Wick’s Impossible Task?

John Wick’s impossible task has been alluded to in the films, but never really fully explored. Because the films all take place after he comes out of retirement to start his violent path of vengeance, there is a huge amount of time during his prime as an assassin that has been left unrevealed. All fans get to find out through dialogue given by Viggo Tarasov, who had ordered Wick to eliminate all of the Tarasov family’s enemies in a single night to make sure that no one would be able to retaliate after.

This was when Wick had met his future wife Helen and wanted to retire, so Viggo assigned him this “impossible” task with the thought that Wick would never actually make it happen. But when he did, Wick was then able to retire and eventually led down the darker path we see play out in the films later. If the anime is going to be showcasing this single evening of violence, it’s possible that it’s going to be one of the most action-packed releases in the franchise to date.