John Wick: Chapter 4 Director Confirms Keanu Reeves Wants to Make Chapter 5

John Wick: Chapter 4's Chad Stahelski says Keanu Reeves is up for another outing as the action blockbuster's titular assassin.

John Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski recently confirmed that star Keanu Reeves remains eager to reprise the 2023 action-thriller's titular role in John Wick: Chapter 5.

Stahelski discussed Reeves' enthusiasm for the sequel on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "Yeah, Keanu and I've talked," he said. "Keanu, if you ask him right now, 'Would you do John Wick 5?' He'd be, 'Fuck yeah!' But then he'd look and go, 'Well, what is it? I have no fucking idea.' And believe me, it's not like, 'We're going to figure it out today'... We have a lot of set pieces, we have a lot of ideas, we have a lot of things that we didn't go or didn't do before. I have no doubt that we'd come up with a lot of great pieces. It just -- what’s the main threat? We're about myths. It's like a fable. What's the message in the fable? What's the moral of the story?'"

Stahelski's comments track with previous remarks the director has made regarding the future of the John Wick franchise. This includes his response to Lionsgate's May 2023 announcement that a fifth John Wick installment is officially in the works, which Stahelski seemed to imply was a premature move on the studio's part. Notably, Stahelski reiterated one of his key points from the Happy Sad Confused podcast episode, namely, that he still hasn't come up with a fully-formed story for John Wick: Chapter 5. The stuntman-turned-director added that part of the challenge in developing a fifth entry in the series is that "we can't just do the same thing."

John Wick 4 Director Discusses the Alternate Ending

There's also the significant narrative hurdle of John Wick's apparent death at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4 which Stahelski presumably needs to clear before he can move forward with the sequel. The director has yet to divulge whether he's already figured out how Wick survives his seemingly fatal injuries in the fourth John Wick installment. However, he did recently reveal that an alternate ending was filmed that made the assassin's fate seem far less final. Stahelski went on to say that this ending was scrapped following negative feedback from test screenings.

Stahelski's decision to trial two versions of John Wick: Chapter 4's finale is hardly surprising, as he's openly admitted to being disappointed with how John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum wrapped up. According to Stahelski, he felt like he "let everybody down" with the threequel's cliffhanger ending because it didn't offer fans a definitive conclusion to John Wick's story.

John Wick: Chapter 5 does not yet have a release date.