Clearly realizing it’s got something hot going on with that dapper, pencil wielding super hit-man, John Wick, Lionsgate is attempting to expand his weird, assassin-heavy world into a full-blown cinematic universe. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the studio has just come out of a bidding war with a script for a female-led spy drama called Ballerina, with an eye toward possibly turning it into a John Wick spin-off.
Details on the spec script—written by newcomer Shay Hatten—are being kept tight, but Lionsgate has passed it off to Basil Iwanyk, who produced both of the earlier John Wick films. Presumably, the idea is to fit its story of a female assassin who hunts other hired killers into the elaborate mythology of the Wick-everse, which shouldn’t be too hard, given that the franchise’s second film established that pretty much 2/3rds of the population of New York is somehow involved in the murder-for-hire game.