It's been 10 years since John Wick came out of retirement and blew movie audiences away. The four-movie franchise only grew with both critical response and box office success, coming to an epic conclusion in John Wick: Chapter 4. And while Chad Stahelski isn’t ruling out a John Wick: Chapter 5, he’s also clear that the most recent movie is still the end of John Wick’s story.
John Wick successfully “won” at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4, but he also lost his life in the process. The movie seemed to tell us that John was dead pretty definitively, but the film did technically leave just enough of an opening for John to return if a fifth movie were to happen. Since then we’ve heard John Wick: Chapter 5 is in development, but franchise director Chad Stahelski tells THR there’s no real “plan” for a new movie, though some ideas are being thrown around. He explained…
The honest truth is you don’t [top John Wick: Chapter 4]. You simply don’t. There’s no topping what we did. That’s the end. That’s the deal. That’s what we found closure for. Look, sometimes, we’ll keep things in development. Sometimes, we’ll use development as an exercise, but is there an opportunity to do [John Wick 5]? Of course, there is, whether it’s for money or for creativity. Jesus, in the last three years, I’ve already had three or four versions of a John Wick 5. They were different ways to crack the story, but it’s almost a mental exercise for me.
Chad Stahelski is clear that whatever a John Wick: Chapter 5 might be it “would not be part of that storyline” that ended with Chapter 4, so a theoretical movie that saw John Wick return from the grave would be something new. Perhaps in the same way that Wick came out of retirement following being attacked by mobsters in the first film, something new would cross his path leading him to reveal he wasn’t really dead.
Interestingly, the director admits that one of the reasons a John Wick: Chapter 5 might happen is the money. John Wick: Chapter 4 was the franchise's highest-grossing film, so there’s every reason the studio would want more. It wasn't exactly a shock to learn that John Wick: Chapter 5 was in development. Certainly, one imagines Stahelski himself would be paid handsomely to direct it, and it would likely be hard to pass up the dump truck full of money that would be backed up to his house.
And it seems all but certain that if the movie comes, for whatever reasons might be contrived to do another, the audience will show up. Fans love John Wick and will almost certainly want to see more if and when it happens.
But there are also creative reasons to do it. It sounds like Stahelski has ideas for sequences that could be in a new John Wick movie, even if there isn’t a plan for how they would fit. He specifically mentions a car chase sequence that he has in mind he still wants to do.
Of course, there are also ways for that sort of creativity to be exercised outside of a direct John Wick sequel. Chad Stahelski is now directly overseeing an ever-growing World of John Wick. Ana de Armas is co-starring in the first spinoff film, Ballerina which is currently on the 2025 movie schedule and there are other films, TV series, and even an anime that are currently in development. Whether or not we get another John Wick movie, John Wick will be with us for a long time to come.
