Well, it’s official: COVID-19 has done what Russian mobsters, armored private SWAT soldiers, and Common never could: Knocked John Wick off his game. Collider reports today that John Wick: Chapter 4—Latin Subtitle Pending has now been officially delayed, moving from its scheduled spot in May 2021 to May 27, 2022.
The move, presumably, has less to do with worries about whether movie theaters will be open in the summer of 2021—hopefully—and more with the ways that the shuttering of the 2020 summer blockbuster season will affect releases going forward. With most of the year’s big, non-Trolls tentpoles having been bumped back to 2021, there’s presumably just no room for Keanu Reeves to throw an infinite number of knives at Eurotrash badguys. (There’s also the whole question of production times, since filming on the series obviously can’t begin until quarantine lockdowns lift—despite how fun it might be to watch Reeves fight off invisible mooks while filming himself on his iPhone.)
Overall plans for the wider John Wick franchise remains vaguely optimistic; both spin-off film The Ballerina and TV series prequel The Continental are hypothetically still in the works, although production obviously isn’t moving forward at the moment. Meanwhile, the status of our own spec scripts, John Wick Vs. Dracula, John Wick Vs. Dracula 2: The Renfield Sanction, and John Wick Vs. Jason remain viable as fuck, so give us a call, Lionsgate.
In addition to the John Wick news, the studio is also bumping around a few other projects. Per Variety, the Ryan Reynolds sequel The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is now set for a 2021 release, as is the Chris Rock-starring Saw sequel, Spiral.