Five years ago, just a few months after John Wick: Chapter 2 premiered in theaters, it was announced that a TV show called The Continental was in development to focus the title hotel that caters to assassins. It’s since been revealed that The Continental takes place decades before the events of the John Wick movies, and originally the plan was for it to air on Starz. As of today, that’s no longer the case. The Continental is now heading to streaming, and we also finally have a premiere window for the prequel.
Lionsgate and Peacock have signed a “multi-year deal” for The Continental to premiere exclusively on the latter streaming service. Additionally, this three-part event series will be delivered to Peacock subscribers sometime in 2023. So now fans of the John Wick franchise have something else to look forward to along with John Wick: Chapter 4, which dropped its first trailer at last month’s San Diego Comic-Con.
The specifics behind why The Continental was moved from Starz to Peacock are unclear, though in the official announcement, Kelly Campbell, President, Peacock and Direct-to-Consumer, said that by bringing the prequel to the platform and putting the full power of NBCUniversal behind it, The Continental will “be the streaming event of the year.” In his own statement, Lionsgate Television Group Chair Kevin Beggs described Peacock as being “the perfect home” for The Continental and labeled it as “one of the most highly-anticipated streaming events of 2023.”
With Ian McShane’s Winston being a key supporting character in the main John Wick saga, The Continental points the spotlight on the hotel manager in 1975 New York, with The Flight Attendant’s Colin Woodell playing him in the prequel. The younger Winston embarks on a mission to seize control of the iconic hotel, resulting in him charting a deadly course through the Big Apple’s criminal underworld. Along with Ayomide Adegun and Peter Greene, who are respectively playing the younger versions of Charon and Uncle Charlie (played in the movies by Lance Reddick and David Patrick Kelly) The Continental cast includes folks like Mel Gibson, Ben Robson, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Jessica Allain, Mishel Prada and Nhung Kate.
Behind the scenes, in addition to their writing and showrunning duties, Greg Coolidge and Kirk Ward executive produced alongside Albert Hughes, Thunder Road Pictures’ Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, Chad Stahelski, Derek Kolstad, David Leitch, Shawn Simmons, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese and Marshall Persinger. Albert Hughes directed the first and third installments, and Charlotte Brandstrom directed the second installment. Although The Continental appears to currently just be a one-and-done story, the fact that Peacock and Lionsgate hatched a “multi-year deal” has me wondering if we could see more Continental stories down the line, as opposed to this being a one-and-done affair.
Once Peacock sets a concrete release date for The Continental, we’ll let you know. Until then, John Wick: Chapter 4 is set to come out on March 24, 2023, and there’s also a spinoff in the works called Ballerina, which will be led by Ana de Armas.
