The first time Keanu Reeves‘s title character meets Laurence Fishburne as the Bowery King in John Wick, the King says, “The man. The myth. The legend.” Wick, he says, is “not very good at retiring.”
The King has been proven right several times over, especially since the Wick franchise’s home studio, Lionsgate, has confirmed there will be a fifth movie in the series, according to Deadline.
Here’s more from Deadline:
[Lionsgate] CEO John Feltheimer said, “We’re also busy preparing scripts for the next two installments of our John Wick action franchise, with John Wick 4 slated to hit theatres Memorial Day weekend 2022. We hope to shoot both John Wick 4 & 5 back to back when Keanu becomes available early next year.”
The sequel, John Wick 4, is currently scheduled for May 27, Memorial Day weekend.
Reeves—who has been subject to viral jokes about the possibility he might be immortal because he simply doesn’t seem to age—will be 56 in September, but it’s clear that he isn’t slowing down at all. He is starring with Alex Winter in Bill & Ted Face the Music, out August 28 in the US, and has been shooting the fourth installment in the Matrix series, though that was somewhat delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Deadline notes “Wick has become such a big action franchise for Lionsgate,” in global box office earnings of more than $584 million and “there’s a Starz John Wick TV series The Continental which is looking to premiere sometime following the fourth movie.”
That means that in addition to being reliably entertaining action flicks, the Wick movies are cash cows for the studio at a time when Hollywood is reeling from the gut punch the pandemic delivered to the movie industry’s bottom line in general.
Reeves told GQ in 2019 that he would keep making Wick movies “As far as the audience wants to go.”
The storylines for the upcoming installments are still top secret, but John Wick: Chapter 4 is currently set to premiere in almost two years on May 27, 2022. Hopefully, the wait for number five will be much shorter.