 What's up and welcome to One Take, I'm Gil and today I want to talk about the just announced John Wick spin-off film titled Ballerina. According to Deadline.com the movie Ballerina focuses on a young female assassin who seeks revenge against the people who killed her family. Now a few websites including Deadline.com are saying that we've actually seen this character. I don't know if that's exactly accurate. If you look at John Wick Chapter 3 there is a character in the film who is credited as Ballerina. But if you recall that was part of a whole group of Ballerinas that were being trained to be assassins. So I don't think it's clear that the one actress who was credited generically as Ballerina is the Ballerina. But I think it's a safe bet that the character in this movie will be part of that ballet troupe. Now I'm not automatically opposed to any sort of John Wick spin-off idea. In fact I'd say the world of John Wick is more ripe for spin-off than most movies because they've really built their own world here that functions by its own rules and they very clearly established that John Wick isn't the only interesting character in this world. However there are a few red flags for me around this Ballerina movie. First off the idea of a Ballerina assassin has kind of become a trope at this point. You have Black Widow from Marvel. There's the Red Sparrow movie with Jennifer Lawrence. So it feels a little bit like we've seen this concept before. On the other hand John Wick is a movie that's thrived on its visuals and a Ballerina assassin is certainly something that's ripe with opportunity for interesting visuals. Another red flag for me is how generic sounding the premise is. At least what we know so far a young female assassin seeks revenge against the people who killed her family. And you might say to me Gil look at the premise of John Wick. It was just about a guy seeking revenge because people killed his puppy. But that's part of what made the whole John Wick franchise so great. The fact that it takes this somewhat absurd premise takes it seriously but still has a sense of humor about it. I feel like all three John Wick films have done a great job of nailing that tone where it takes itself just seriously enough for you to get emotionally invested but it's still able to have pretty absurd plot elements like a lot of New York City's homeless secretly being assassins. So all three of these movies have had a serious enough tone but still a pretty strong sense of humor behind it. So obviously I'm reading a lot into really a fragment of a premise. But at least from that premise alone it makes me worried that they're not going to be able to capture that unique John Wick tone. Now to be honest I probably would give this movie more benefit of the doubt if not for the final red flag in all of this which is that they announced the director of this film will be Len Wiseman. He's best known for a few movies in the Underworld series and for Live Free or Die Hard. The fourth Die Hard film. I'm not totally familiar with the Underworld films and I actually thought Live Free or Die Hard was watchable. It was a totally fine movie but like I just talked about one of the things that's made the John Wick movies so successful is how they've managed to thread that needle and hit just the right tone between action drama and comedy. And unfortunately I just haven't really seen anything from this director that would give me the confidence that he can pull it off. Now it's always possible that Len Wiseman will surprise us and knock this one out of the park. There are a couple of things working in his favor. Number one, Shay Hayton. One of the writers from John Wick chapter three is returning to pen the script for Ballerina. Keanu Reeves is on as an executive producer. Now a lot of times executive producer doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of the creative direction of the film but Keanu Reeves gives me the impression that he's pretty protective of this franchise and really cares about it. So you'd hope that he'll at least be somewhat involved in the production of this film to make sure that it lives up to the John Wick brand. Anyway at this point we really know very little about this movie but as big a fan as I am of the John Wick franchise this news story worries me a little bit. It makes me wonder if they're going to keep expanding the John Wick franchise and risk tarnishing it or diluting it. So I'm definitely going into this one with some skepticism. Since we're talking about expansions of the John Wick franchise it's worth mentioning the other spin-off that was announced in the last couple of years. A TV show set to premiere on the stars network titled The Continental. This is another one that kind of worries me because one of the aspects of the John Wick franchise which is definitely enjoyable is the world building. I mentioned earlier the fact that much of New York City's homeless are truly secret assassins or the very concept of a hotel offering various services to assassins and sort of serving as a safe meeting ground for them. The hotel which is the show's namesake. All that stuff to me works well in the background of the John Wick films but I get the feeling that if you were to focus on those world building aspects and put them under a magnifying glass you'd start to see how sort of absurd all of it is. And I worry that a TV show called The Continental where you don't have John Wick at least not as a main character and you can't pull off the same sort of action stunts that you get in the film franchise at least not at the same caliber. You've got to assume they have more budgetary constraints on TV so when you lack all those elements and all of that world building and absurdity comes more to the forefront I worry that it could sort of fall apart a little bit. So I can't wait for John Wick chapter four which we know is coming but this ballerina spinoff the continental spinoff those are two things that I'm going into with a lot of skepticism but we don't know a lot about either of them at this point so I'll definitely wait and see and maybe a trailer will come out or something will be announced that gets me excited for one or both of these expansions of the John Wick franchise. Anyway I think that about wraps it up so if you enjoyed this video hit the like button subscribe to this channel and make sure to hit that little bell icon to make sure you get notifications whenever we release more videos like this one. Thanks for watching.