John Wick ignited an entire franchise and changed the whole action genre––all because someone murdered a dog and stole the wrong man’s car.
The original film, released in 2014, starred Keanu Reeves as John Wick, one of the most deadly assassins who had been trying to retire from his line of work. However, as tends to happen, instead of kicking it back and relaxing, a tragic series of events set him on a path to bloody revenge.
Thanks to it, though, audiences worldwide are now in love with the franchise’s incredibly unique and engrossing world, characters, action, and lore.
John Wick Filmmakers Reminisce 10 Years Later
In a series of exclusive interviews with The Direct’s Russ Milheim, the filmmakers behind 2014’s John Wick reminisced about the series’ first entry that just turned ten years old––a movie that started a massive franchise thanks to the murder of a dog.
David Leitch, who co-directed the first John Wick film with Chad Stahleski (and now serves as executive producer for the franchise), recalled the difficulty many had with accepting the fact that a dog was going to be dying in the opening act of their big movie.
Leitch shared how the studio expected a rewrite would be coming in any day to change the fate of Daisy, the Beagle given to John Wick by his late wife:
“Those negotiations, it was funny, like everyone kept saying, ‘Well, you’re not really going to do that, right?’ We gotta write that out of the script. And like, we’re like, ‘No, no, we’re really doing it.’ And we just kept going through pre-production, and they’re like, ‘So when are you going to rewrite that you find the dog and he takes it to the vet, or he finds the dog at the vet at the end, or whatever.’ And we’re like, ‘We’re not.’ It’s such a small movie, people were like, just let these stunt guys do what they want.”
When asked what he most remembered most fondly about his time on the movie, Leitch pointed to “the first camera test” with Keanu Reeves in full costume and walking around, a moment that gave him goosebumps:
“I remember the first camera test, seeing Keanu put on the suit and walk around. We shot the camera test in this sort of parking garage, but we put up some neon lights and made it feel sort of like Wick-y. And I was just like goosebumps, you know, from the first camera test, I felt like we were making something in the spirit of those iconic movies, like ‘Point Blank.'”
Producer Erica Lee recalled how great it was to know they finally had a movie everyone was confident in:
“The fond memories are more like once we knew we had a movie. I think everyone could take a deep breath, but to say that anyone saw it coming or knew, because even when the movie came out… People sort of found it slowly. So, the afterlife was kind of as big as its beginning. So it wasn’t like it in one minute it was like gangbusters.”
For producer Basil Iawnyk, he was quick to point towards the experience of working with Keanu Reeves himself and how there was “a great feeling of camaraderie” amongst everyone on the movie:
“I think I remember most fondly it was the first time I ever worked with Keanu, and you always hear the legends of what a great guy is, and he’s so easy to work with, and he’s so collaborative, and working with him was just so much fun, and there are so many laughs… There was a great feeling of camaraderie in that movie. And so I think that experience and shooting in New York City, which was really fun…”
Chad Stahelski pulled a page from Lee’s book, noting that while there was a lot of pressure, he fondly remembers when they all finally got “on the same page” and realized what they had on their hands:
“There’s the don’t fuck it up mentality, and then there’s the––when you get there and, you know, everybody’s on the same page, there’s this thing… I would say about maybe halfway through, we found our feet, and you realized, Oh, we could make something pretty cool. We can do it, it’s going to be a little bit, I don’t know, different, you know, it’s the movie we wanted to make… I think once that’s it, you kind of relax a little bit and enjoy the process. But it was that always like, ooh, we’re gonna kill a puppy, huh? Okay.”
The process of making the movie was anything but a cakewalk, however. In fact, the filmmakers were adamant that it was an almost hellish experience.
“The financing didn’t come through,” Iawnyk admitted something that “everybody had to chip in” for in various ways.
“The financing didn’t come through like they said it was gonna come through. It was extremely shady, in retrospect. And we were expecting a tranche of money… Pretty much maybe eight, nine days before we started shooting the movie, and it never showed up, and we were pretty much told it wouldn’t show up. And so I left a gigantic hole in a movie that was already pretty tightly budgeted. And so everybody had to chip in.”
“It was basically imploding in front of our eyes,” Erica Lee recalled:
“Well, the irony is, it wasn’t so fond. The first movie was very hard. I think, you know, putting the movie together independently is always challenging but for a lot of reasons. Specifically, ‘John Wick,’ like, the financing fell apart right when we were in prep right before we started shooting. So, it was just sort of mayhem. Crew members stopped coming in, and Basil was paying for wardrobe… It was basically imploding in front of our eyes.”
As previously reported in an interview between the filmmakers and Business Insider, a last-minute generous investment of $6 million dollars from actress Eva Longoria saved the project from properly being shut down. Without it, the entire John Wick franchise wouldn’t even exist.
Basil Iwanyk playfully remembered how he actually still has a framed post-note of all the people who were going to sue him if it had, sitting on the wall right next to the first call sheet of production:
“I remember I called my lawyer, PJ Shapiro, and I just said this, ‘I think this movie’s going down. Who’s going to sue me if this movie goes down?’… And actually, in my office in New York, there is a, it’s framed, of the post-it that I listed everyone that’s going to sue me next to the first day of the first call sheet of production.”
The Direct then made sure to ask about alternate concepts or ideas that were originally in that first John Wick movie––after all, fans love learning about what could have been.
Iawnyk remembered that in the original version of John Wick, there was a lot more time between the death of his wife and the killing of the dog, with it looking to “be really contemplative” and allow audiences to get a sense of who he was:
“In the original version, you spend a lot more time with him, between the death of his wife and the killing of his dog, and the stealing of his car. And I know Chad has told this story, and it’s true. I think we shot for 45 days. I think nine days of it was just Keanu [Reeves] walking around the house in sweatpants, a t-shirt, with a thing of coffee, just moping. We thought it was going to be really contemplative, getting a sense of who he was, you know, much more of a sense of his life with Helen. And ultimately, we cut like 80% of it out…”
The producer also teased how they’ve come close to revealing what the impossible task was:
“Over the course of the movies, you know, we’ve tried to maybe get a hint of what the impossible task was, but we’ve cut that out.”
The original draft of the first film “was way more grounded,” Leitch added, which is when they realized “there’s a graphic novel sensibility we could do with this thing:”
“When we read the original draft, it was way more grounded… There were the gold coins, and there was the guy, the old guy in a suit… They weren’t written as mythic, you know. And I think when we read it, we sort of talked about it and were like, there’s a graphic novel sensibility we could do to this thing. We could make it slightly heightened.”
Iawnyk gleefully brought up the filmmaker’s “super meetings at Keanu’s house,” which are intensive (roughly) nine-hour gatherings that they’ve done for the movies in the franchise.
“We have these things called Super meetings at Keanu’s house. And I’m not kidding you, they’re like, nine hours. They’re so long that, like you start out, you go for hours and hours and hours, you have food, and you start having cocktails, and then the cocktails wear off, and you have food again, and then you continue on with this. I mean, literally, it’s a whole like, you’re, you’re sober, you get buzzed, you so you get hung over, and then you’re back again. Like, it’s just insane.”
The producer also teased how they throw every idea around that one could ever possibly imagine, including the idea “of John Wick speaking Latin every time [he] talk[s] to Winston:”
“And so every idea on the planet was, like, there are ideas of John Wick speaking Latin every time you talk to Winston. Like, all sorts of nut job stuff that happens when you’ve when you’re just sitting around going, let’s think of every dumb idea you possibly have.”
John Wick has been so incredibly successful that it’s gone on to influence action films across the entire genre over the past ten years.
Chad Stahelski admits that “it’s very flattering,” but in his eyes, they “didn’t really do anything fresh or new,” but rather made it “a new mix” which was “through [their] own filter:”
“It’s very flattering. People said, ‘Oh, you’ve helped change or influence the action genre. And you’re like, oh, that’s kind of cool. But like, I didn’t really do anything fresh or new. It’s just a new mix. It was through our own filter… If you can’t see Kurosawa or if can’t see Tarantino, if you can’t see Tarkovsky or Guy Richie, or any of those influences in ‘John Wick,’ then you kind of not looking…”
One of the biggest elements of the John Wick series outside of its amazing action sequences is its expansive and inventive lore, which follows a secret assassin underground across the entire world operating in the shadows.
In approaching what they were going to do with John Wick and its unique take on the action genre, Chad Stahelski put it perfectly: “We’ll do the modern day myth or we’ll do our own version of JRR Tolkien in the present day:”
“So when it comes to action movies, Keanu and I always wanted to, you know, like, how do you bring in Hong Kong, Japanese, Korean? How do you bring all these action genres and put it together a different flavor of martial arts… it didn’t really fit some of the action genres that were existing. So we’re like, we’ll fuck it. We’ll just create our own…. We’ll do the modern-day myth, or we’ll do our own version of Tolkien in the present day.”
Stahelski pointed to John Wick 2 as when they “cracked the code” of the world’s intriguing lore:
“We just started bending slowly… ‘John Wick 2,’ that’s when we kind of cracked the code. There are Continentals in every city, and there are all these High Table things. That’s when we kind of blew it up to go, oh, fuck it. We’re just going to do Tolkien. We’ll [be] breaking everything up. And that’s kind of where we figured things out and kind of saw the scope of what we could do.”
“It also took the least off as we [went],” Stahelski elaborated, explaining how, as they did more and more, it felt that anything was on the table.
“And it also took the leash off as we went…We can be anywhere once we go to ninjas, horses, you know, rock operas, we could do anything. So we kind of created our own sub-genre so that we could, you know, basically it was an excuse to put Shakespearean dialog, full martial arts, incredible set pieces, and locations all into one… You know, stealing and taking the best ideas from ‘Mission Impossible,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘Bond,’ ‘Taken,’ or some of the great Asian films out the Asian action films, we just kind of mix it all together.”
Lee added that it was easy to go bigger and bolder as the series went on thanks to having “more resources” and “more money” and incoming calls from plenty of actors that wanted to play along:
“We’ve had the great opportunity of having more resources, more time, more money… Actors that want to play and come along for the ride. You get incoming calls. So I think that all affords us more resources to do, to make the world bigger and to expand… But really, it’s also technology… What VFX could help us accomplish three years later.”
Fans hoping for more John Wick are in luck, as the franchise doesn’t seem to be dying anytime soon. On top of next year’s spinoff film Ballerina starring Ana De Armas, a proper John Wick 5 was reported to be in active development.
The film that started it all returns to theaters for two nights only – November 3rd and 6th, 2024. Get tickets here!
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