John Wick’s Ian McShane and (maybe) Keanu Reeves will be in Ana de Armas’ spin-off Ballerina
The John Wick spin-off will be directed by Len Wiseman for some reason
Aux News John Wick
People keep asking if Keanu Reeves will reprise his role as John Wick for the Ana de Armas-led spin-off Ballerina, and we haven’t really had an answer. But now, yeah, we’re thinking he’s in talks to come back! Ahem. That comes from Collider, which says Reeves is set to appear in Ballerina as the Baba Yaga himself. We don’t know how extensive his appearance would be (they hopefully won’t turn this into a Book Of Boba Fett situation where the character from the main thing comes in and completely dominates the spin-off), but we do know that another familiar face from the John Wick movies will be making an appearance that does sound like it will be important.
That’s because The Hollywood Reporter says that Ian McShane—a.k.a. duplicitous hotel mogul Winston—will be appearing in Ballerina for what a press release says will be a “pivotal role” in the story. We don’t know many specifics about that story, but we do know it stars Ana de Armas as an assassin avenging the murder of her family. Based on the name of the movie, we’d guess she was trained by Anjelica Huston’s character from John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, since she had a team of ballerinas trained as assassins, but this universe is pretty complicated. There’s no reason there wouldn’t be a second group of ballet-themed killers (it is a bit of trope in assassin fiction, let’s be honest).
Ballerina, for some inconceivable reason that we would still like to have someone explain to us, will be directed by Len Wisemen from the Underworld series of films—even though this would’ve been a cool opportunity for a female filmmaker to get the kind of high-profile opportunity that stunt performer Chad Stahelski got with the mainline John Wick series… but we don’t run Hollywood, what do we know? It’s better than getting Mel Gibson to star at least.
John Wick: Chapter 4, where we will next see Mr. Wick and that greedy, double-crossing snake Winston, will be in theaters on March 23, 2023.
10 Comments
I want to see more square dancing themed assassins.
Does Ballerina have a talking fetus?
If McShane is in this press release but not in the movie I will sue the studio.
Clearly you only want to watch the movie to masturbate to Ian McShane
Maybe Director Len Wiseman should do more directin’ and Len Wiseman.
There’s no director Len Wiseman!
“Ballerina, for some inconceivable reason that we would still like to have someone explain to us, will be directed by Len Wisemen from the Underworld series of films—even though this would’ve been a cool opportunity for a female filmmaker to get the kind of high-profile opportunity that stunt performer Chad Stahelski got with the mainline John Wick series”On the one hand, yeah, there needs to be more diversity behind the camera. On the other, singling out the female-led spinoff for such a remark makes it hard not to read it as “Ballerina? Sounds like chick stuff to me!”
well i think the point is also that len wiseman is bad at directing movies. i’d certainly rather literally anyone else direct.
Yeah beyond the (always valid) question of “did you consider someone other than a cis white guy first?” Wisemen seems like a sensible (if unexciting) choice.I do think if you write for the AVClub long enough your word processor appends “for some reason” onto every third sentence you write.
Well, I mean, somebody’s got to direct it, don’t they?