The John Wick franchise is known for its well-choreographed action sequences and high body count. But in an interview with comicbook.com, director Chad Stahelski revealed that the original script of John Wick only had a few deaths.
According to Stahelski, Keanu Reeves sent him the script on a Friday, having read it in a day and thinking about it all weekend. Talking about the original screenplay, Stahelski said “It was much more contained. I think only three people died in the original script, two were in a car crash. It was very, very minimal, and it was slightly different. I read it, and I’d always had this idea about Greek mythology and how to tell more a fableistic kind of story, make a surreal action movie so it wasn’t so grounded and gray, just something different.”
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When Stahelski came on board, the direction of John Wick shifted to the action-packed franchise known today. Distinctive for its long balletic action sequences, 77 people are killed onscreen in the first John Wick, a massive 128 in John Wick: Chapter 2 and a slightly more sensible 94 in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. So altogether that makes 299 kills by one man so far, and there’s still two more films to come.
But Stahelski says he never meant for John Wick to be a mass murderer, saying “People joke about it [the kill count], but the way I choreograph with my guys and stuff, we just choreograph motion and set pieces and we try to get this balletic kind of dance, live performance feel to everything.” When it comes to the practicalities of filming all that carnage , Stahelski jokes, “It’s just when you shoot people in the head, they can’t get back up so you can reuse a stunt guy. …So I got to keep using more and more stunt guys.”
So John Wick could have been a very different film if Stahelski had kept to the original script and there may not have been much demand for a follow up if he did. But with each new entry of the franchise doing extremely well and Keanu Reeves at peak popularity, Stahelski’s gamble on John Wick really paid off.
John Wick 4 is expected to release in May 2022.
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Source: Digital Spy