It’s hard not to compare a movie like Nobody to something like the John Wick franchise. Even if the Bob Odenkirk film wasn’t scripted by Wick franchise scribe Derek Kolstad, the similar nature of the Keanu Reeves franchise and Odenkirk’s action-comedy ass-kicker would have been enough to draw comparisons. However, if you ask Kolstad whether he minds that fact or not, the answer you get is bound to contain an F-bomb or two.
With Nobody heading onto PVOD this weekend, the occasion called for more reflection pertaining to Bob Odenkirk’s explosive extravaganza. This led to Derek Kolstad speaking with Collider and being asked whether or not he minded the John Wick comparisons that Nobody has already drawn. Ecstatic about the scenario he’s found himself in, Kolstad burst with pride as he answered thusly:
I fucking love that comparison, man. I mean, these are the movies I grew up with and love. I’m not here to reinvent the wheel. I’m here to make a really good wheel and you’re like ‘I want to fucking ride on that wheel.’ So when you look at the world-building of it all, the Lethal Weapons, the Bond, the Statham, all that kind of stuff I grew up with, Jason Bourne. All those elements are there because I’m fucking playing on a playground in the sandbox. And those are the toys at my disposal.
Even in the world of pandemic moviegoing, the performance of Nobody has been pretty impressive. With almost double its budget made through theatrical release, the upcoming VOD release could be enough of a reason for Universal to start scheming towards a sequel. While that’s not the whole story when it comes to evaluating whether or not Nobody was a smash hit success, it’s probably enough of an omen to wonder about the future potential to revisit the life of Bob Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell.
Should that happen to be the case, a Nobody sequel would happen at a rather interesting juncture in writer Derek Kostad’s career. While he helped build the John Wick series through scripting the first three entries, Kolstad won’t be taking part in the ride that the next two sequels are about to embark on. But even with that fact in mind, the man who build the foundation for two unexpected badasses to take the field is still pleased as anything to be compared to his own past work, making it perfectly clear with this simple statement:
If every movie I make after this point people enjoy it and they’re like ‘But it’s like John Wick,’ I’ll be like ‘Fuck yeah!’
Reading a creator like Derek Kolstad reveling in the fact that he can revisit past successes like John Wick with fresh films like Nobody is absolutely refreshing. His approach of making “a really good wheel” is admirable, and it makes his critically acclaimed venture with Bob Odenkirk a welcome distraction as movie theaters start to rev up before the summer movie season. If you want to see Kolstad and Odenkirk’s new wheel, you can catch Nobody either in movie theaters or in the comfort of your own home on PVOD.
