If you just can't get enough of John Wick, well there's more to look forward to after John Wick: Chapter 4. Taking place between John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum and Chapter 4, Ballerina focuses in on a new hero, played by Ana De Armas and coming from director Len Wiseman. Alongside de Armas, the film will also bring back Anjelica Huston as The Director, who we met in Parabellum, and see cameo returns from Keanu Reeves as John Wick, Ian McShane as Winston Scott, Lance Reddick as Charon (in one of his final roles).
Recently Collider spoke with both Ballerina co-writer Shay Hatten about the film. In discussing some of the backstory of de Armas' character Rooney (who was previously portrayed by Unity Phelan), Hatten explained:
Ballerina starts by introducing a character who kind of went through some of the same training as John in the ballet academy of Anjelica Huston['s character] that we see in the third movie. But then she ends up going to a whole new corner of the world and a new kind of isolated community that really is unlike anything we've seen in these previous John Wick movies.
The John Wick movies have a globe-trotting aspect to them, and it seems like Ballerina might take us to a place we haven't seen before. Hatten continued, "It really is service by story. It's wherever it makes sense for the story to go, we'll go to that part of the world and just try to think of something cool to do there."
How Much Is John Wick in Ballerina?
Obviously even with spin-offs, the question on some viewers' lips might be, "Where is John Wick?" And while the film is focusing specifically on Rooney and her journey as a ballerina-assassin, Reeves is not completely absent. Ballerina producer Erica Lee explained that Reeves was on set filming for "about a week," while Reddick "shot for a day." Although she calls the addition of the John Wick character as "last minute adds" it seems that Reeves' role will be more extensive.
Hatten elaborated by saying:
We got him to be in it for a good chunk. He's a real character, and it's not just kind of a one-piece cameo. He's got... Well, I shouldn't say too much, but he's in the movie in a way that I think people are going to be really excited by. And it was cool because it really was... the only reason we set it between three and four was because it felt like there was kind of a cool window of time for John there, because at the end of the third movie, he's been shot off the roof. He's really kind of beaten up, and then he recuperates in the Bowery King's basement.
And by the time the fourth movie starts, he's healed. He's on a different side of the world. And we just thought, "Okay, how did he get from point A to point B? What happened in that little time window?" So it just seemed like a really kind of natural way to fit him in and have him interact with this other character's story during that window. So I think it fills in kind of a missing puzzle piece that people will think is interesting, hopefully.
Hatten also talked about co-writing the script with Emerald Fennell, talking about what Fennell brought to the original script when she signed on.
That was actually during an interim when I wasn't on it. I wrote the original script, then was rewriting it. And I think it was when Ana [de Armas] came on, Emerald came on and did a pass at it. And then I came back on later and read her draft, and I was like, "It's great," because she's a genius. So it was like she kind of, I think, put a lot of ideas in there that, as is the nature of the thing, some of them stuck and are in the movie, and some of them we kind of developed away from again as it was going into production. But I do think it was really cool to kind of have a writer that I'm such a fan of just come in and put kind of a touch on the character. So I think it probably brought a lot to the movie.
With the continued success of John Wick, especially with the critical acclaim that John Wick: Chapter 4 has received, it feels inevitable that Ballerina could spin off into another series of its own.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is now in theaters. For more on John Wick 4, here's our interview with Reeves and director Chad Stahelski.