When the John Wick franchise started, John Wick was a retired man, and he had every intention of staying that way until Theon Greyjoy’s poor decision-making seeped across franchises and brought him out of retirement. That set off a series of events and now John Wick is back, and even with John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum arriving this month, Keanu Reeves doesn’t look to be retiring from the character anytime soon. Speaking about the franchise's future, Keanu Reeves said:
It’s not really up to me. Well, eventually. But the opportunity to do it was up to the audience, right? And that’s up to if whether we made a film that people enjoy or not.
There you have it, folks: if you want to see more John Wick, the answer is to vote with your dollar, because that’s what gives Keanu Reeves the opportunity to keep playing Baba Yaga. As long as the audience still cares, enjoys these movies and goes to see them, John Wick can keep racking up kills for years to come.
Keanu Reeves said it’s not up to him how long the John Wick franchise goes, and that's true in many respects. That said, if it were up to him, it seems that he would choose to keep playing the character for the foreseeable future as he seems to genuinely enjoy it.
Eventually the actor may run out of steam since John Wick is certainly a more physically exhausting role than Keanu Reeves’ rom-com parts or Duke Caboom in Toy Story 4. But at the moment, he’s good to go and hasn’t lost any interest in playing John Wick, and thus has no plans on retiring from him anytime soon.
This is bad news for the character John Wick, who at this point has to be in desperate need of a nap, a shower and serious medical attention, but it's good news for fans of the franchise. As much as we all want John Wick to find happiness and walk off into the sunset, his dog by his side with no more deaths left to deal, John Wick being back in the hitman business is too entertaining to call for his retirement just yet.
Keanu Reeves has expressed his enthusiasm for the John Wick franchise before, and his John Wick: Chapter 3 co-star Ian McShane figures it could go for another decade. That’s quite a lofty prediction, but considering that John Wick: Chapter 2 basically doubled the domestic and worldwide box office of the first film, and Parabellum is tracking to open even bigger than its predecessors, who knows, maybe in a few years John Wick will be Keanu Reeves’ most iconic character instead of Neo.
In his conversation with Uproxx, Keanu Reeves mentioned that the continuation of the franchise is dependent on the audience and ultimately whether or not the film is good and people enjoy it. At least on that end, it would appear that requirement has been fulfilled.
The early reactions to John Wick: Chapter 3 are very positive and indicate that the threequel continues to up the ante for cinematic action while expanding the scope and world of the film, opening up possibilities for future installments in the franchise. That bodes well for John Wick's retirement being postponed indefinitely.
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum opens in theaters on May 17. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see all of the big movies you can look forward to this summer.
