“John Wick” Scribe Returns For Third Helping
Derek Kolstad, who penned the scripts for the first two “John Wick” films, will return to pen the screenplay for the upcoming third movie.
“John Wick: Chapter 3” is being fast-tracked to start production this fall with Reeves expected to reprise his role of beleaguered hitman John Wick.
Chad Stahelski, who co-directed the first and fully directed the second, is working with Kolstad and developing the project with an eye to direct it. Basil Iwanyk will produce.
The two films released so far have made over $250 million worldwide.
A Third “John Wick” Is Moving Along Fast
In the wake of the success of “John Wick: Chapter 2,” a third film in the series appears to be moving along quicker than expected.
The second film’s director Chad Stahelski says that the script for the next entry is already being penned and there’s even a production start date in mind – and it’s not far off. Stahelski tells
Collider:
“We’re currently in the middle of writing it right now. It’s more of a how fast can we get our sh– together. But I would assume that if not by the end of this year, the beginning of next year.”
While Stahelski says he’s “super involved” in the film, he wouldn’t confirm if here’s directing:
“Currently I’m acting as prep director. Hopefully, everything will work out time wise. Of course — I would love to… If you really watch the first and second one, there’s only one place it can go — so I’ll let you sort that out.”
He’s also given a separate and more detailed answer to
Cinema Blend about what work on the film has been done so far and the main advantage he sees creatively with tackling the third film:
“Two is always the tricky one. Because you don’t know who has seen number one, who hasn’t seen number one. Now I think because we’ve done well with one and two, people are vested into the John Wick world, so 3 I don’t have to spend 20 minutes of the first part of number three reminding you, ‘This is a guy with a dog.’ We can just jump right in and have fun and truly be free to create some other expansion of the world without having to ride that line. So looking forward, we’re developing 3 right now — we have a writing team already on it. Derek Kolstad, of course. And we’ve been putting ideas together for the last four months.”
Should things progress as planned, this looks likely to get a very early 2019 release. Late last year it was revealed Stahelski had begun work on “Triple Threat,” an action thriller that would team Tony Jaa, Tiger Chen and Iko Uwais.
“John Wick: Chapter Two” is now available on Digital HD ahead of a disc release and VOD rental premiere on June 13th.