Within the John Wick world, Harry Potter alumnus Natalia Tena plays a character named Katia. As seen in John Wick: Chapter 4, Katia is effectively John Wick’s (Keanu Reeves) adoptive sister, as they both answer to The Director (Anjelica Huston) and the Ruska Roma. Though Tena says she’d love to appear in the Ana de Armas-starring Ballerina spinoff, the John Wick star says she has the perfect idea for a Christmas-based spinoff set in the world of the High Table.
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“In my mind, they’ve probably got a bunch of bases in Europe, Romania, and Eastern Europe. They’ve got a few in Berlin, maybe one in Spain, and then a bunch in America,” Tena says of the global reach of the Ruska Roma. “We were trying to work out the relationship, like was Katia [John Wick’s] niece or is she just a cousin or second cousin? I think it’d be interesting to see what a family Christmas would be like with all these Roma people. I think that’s the last time they saw each other was at a very bizarre family reunion or a baptism, or probably a funeral. “
What is Ballerina about?
While a full synopsis has yet to be unveiled for the first feature film spin-off, John Wick producer Erica Lee previously suggested the movie initially wasn’t set in the same cinematic world. Instead, writer Shay Hatten had initially developed it as a standalone thriller.
“It’s funny,ย Ballerinaย was sort of a long time coming, also. [Writer] Shay Hatten was like an intern for Robert Downey Jr., I had a general meeting with him, he was a hugeย John Wickย fan, and he wroteย Ballerinaย in a vacuum, like as a spec script,” Lee recalled toย Colliderย earlier this year. “He gave it to me, I want to say five years ago, and I read it and was like, ‘Okay.’ It was an assassin, Rooney, it was a female character, but we optioned it and we’re like, ‘Let’s back this into [the]ย John Wickย universe.’”
She continued, “Then we started developing and making it moreย Wick. But this was before we’d even shotย John Wick 3. [There have] been iterations along the way, and asย we keep learning more about the universe and creating new charactersย and refining theย Wickย world, that enters its way intoย Ballerina. So, even a year ago, when we were working on the script, it was like, ‘Okay, Winston was sort of there, and the Charon character, and Anjelica Huston, The Director’s character,’ but it was like, ‘What do we know now? What is the state of The Continental? What is the timeline? How are we breaking it? What are the reference points we can use?’ย Ballerinaย is this constantly evolving ecosystem of a movie.ย It’s just been really fun to work on.”
Ballerinaย hits theaters on June 7th, 2024 whileย John Wick: Chapter 4ย is now available for purchase on digital movie marketplaces before its physical home media release on June 13th.
