John Wick Director Reveals Why Chapter 4 and 5 Didn’t Film Back-to-Back

At one point in time, Lionsgate announced a pair of sequels to John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, originally said to be shot back-to-back. One thing led to another, however, and the filmmakers behind it all decided to split it up. As of now, only John Wick: Chapter 4 is in post-production while it has yet to be seen what will happen to Chapter 5.

As Wick helmer Chad Stahelski tells us, it was simply too much to take on. Instead he and Keanu Reeves wanted to take it one movie at a time and see how things ended up shaking out.

“It seems in the other franchises that have tried it, they just feel like the same thing done again, right? Like there’s no new influence. Sometimes you need that creative breath to come up with fresh shit,” the filmmaker recalls. “Otherwise I’m stressed out about making two movies instead of one really good one. I’m just not that bright. I’m not that clever. I’m not that good as a director to project my vision years into the future and do two great movies.”

He says it was always his goal to focus on one movie and go from there.

“I’m f-cking lucky if I can pull off a great act, let alone two great movies,” Stahelski adds.  “The film morphs and John Wicks are very organic because we’re location based. So to plan out, you know, 10 locations over the course of two years, it’s tough. And I think that’s kind of a rip off to the fans too. Like you’re not getting me at my best. You get me when it’s 200 days in a production, we’re all hammered. The choreographers are putting out the same moves. You’re bored.”

He concludes, “Like this way, I change choreographers and I rotate stunt teams on literally every film and we’re always trying to be creatively better. And we’re trying to do do ourselves from last time. I think it would be unfair to our fan base and unfair to the property in general to just stretch it out in the sake of efficiency or financial or creative efficiency. I’d rather do it, take a breather, get our shit together, analyze our mistakes and see what worked and what didn’t.”

John Wick: Chapter 4 is currently set to enter theaters on March 24, 2023 while The Continental has yet to set a release date.

What other Wick spinoffs would you like to see? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter!