 John Wick 4 and the ballerina, Chad Stileski was just interviewed by the Hollywood reporter and he dropped some interesting tidbits about John Wick 4 and the ballerina. Chad Stileski, by the way, is the director of all three John Wick films. He was also, by the way, Keanu Reeves Stuntman for the Matrix 4, or for the Matrix, sorry, for the original Matrix films. Interesting. And he's had a little bit of involvement in the Matrix 4. He must be one of very few stuntman-turned directors. Well, I know there are others out there, but he is definitely one of the more successful and it shows, right? You can tell that he has an eye for action. John Wick, by the way, Chapter 3 was originally intended as a closing chapter for the franchise. Maybe. That was the word going around when the Hollywood reporter asked Chad Stileski about this. He gave a very long answer. That was kind of a theme throughout the interview, by the way. He tends to ramble a lot, which is great. I want to hear everything he has to say. But here is one quote from the answer he gave when asked, how did you decide not to end it with a third chapter and keep it going to a fourth film? Here's what he said. On every John Wick, there's literally been a day where Keanu and I have sat in the room with whatever writing team we're working with and we go, okay, we're going to end it right here and that's it. We're not looking for the Hollywood happy ending. We never have. At least for the Wicks, we've always liked mythology and fables or something like that. That just kind of end and they don't tell you what happens the next day. He goes on to say that the endings we've seen in Chapter 1, 2 and 3, they don't intend for them to be cliffhangers exactly, but the idea is that like with classic fables, the story doesn't necessarily have a definitive end, right? What happened to Jack and Jill? They go on to live and who knows what happens the next day. It doesn't say happily ever after it. He says that and I thought about it afterwards and fables do frequently have definitive endings with some lesson that you learn. Maybe when his parents read him those stories, they cut off just the last couple words and Jack and Jill, they lived. Or they had John Wick style versions of each of the fairy tales. They broke what's Humpty Dumpty and he was all pissed off, put himself back together, started shooting people. And my takeaway from all that is it's kind of fluid. They didn't necessarily go into Chapter 3 with the intent that it was going to be the end and they didn't necessarily go in with the intent. There's going to be a Chapter 4, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion, right? They figured they'd feel it out and decided to do more. So in the Hollywood Reporter interview interview, Chad Stileski dropped a few tidbits about John Wick 4. First off, he said that a lot of stuff was intended for John Wick 3, including specifically he called out two pretty big action set pieces. A lot of stuff was pulled out of John Wick 3 and a lot of that's going to be going into John Wick 4. He said 90 percent of what was pulled out, they're going to be able to use in John Wick 4. And now spoilers for John Wick 3. That's kind of have you ever been at like a restaurant or buffet where they kind of serve you the food or like a takeout place? And they put some in and they're like, you know, I gave you a little too much and they take it and pull it back out. Right. Right. That's what the feeling I get when you say they took some stuff that was intended for John Wick 3 and saved it for the fourth one. So this is like a day or two later. Leftovers are cold and starting to go stale. Well, I know they're going to be great. It's just I wanted I want as much as possible as as quickly as they can bring it to me. That's right. That's right. So spoilers for John Wick 3 coming in about three seconds. Adam, do you remember at the end of John Wick 3, pretty big moment where Winston shoots John Wick? Wick falls off the building. There was a big debate in that moment, at least between me and my dad over whether Winston intended to kill Wick or that he purposely shoot him in just the right spot and just the right way. So Wick would survive. To me, there's no question that it was an intentional survival situation. Alon, what do you think? I do not think he intended to kill. OK, so we're all in agreement. In the interview, they asked Chad about this and here's what he said. Did Winston mean to shoot him? He meant to shoot. That wasn't the question. Did he mean to kill him? That's open for interpretation. You can take it one of two ways. And that's kind of where we pick up some of the unanswered questions in John Wick 4. Then he talks a lot and let's pick up later in the answer. Did he hope that John Wick was going to live? He likes John. I would hope so. Did he know he was going to survive the 56 foot fall down to an alleyway? I don't know. That's a little ambiguous. Winston is a bit of a gambling man. So I'd like to think personally that Winston's a very smart guy and he doesn't do anything that wasn't planned. I don't think he is impetuous at all. So I'm going to leave you with that. That's actually kind of a good answer because it makes me think. This is probably how Winston looked at it, which is there's a certain obligation that I have to both myself the continental and the high table, which is I have to kill John Wick right now. That said, I would prefer if he didn't actually die. So I'm going to take the I'm going to take a shot that I know might kill him. But it's not like I'm going straight for his head. Right. He gave him the biggest odds of survival. And in fact, in some of what I kind of yada, yada, yada past in his answer, he specifically addresses the point that he didn't shoot for the head. So I think Chad basically gave us the answer. It's like when he declared him ex-communicado, but he gave him like, I don't know, an hour heads up. Right. Right. So he could go he had enough time to go to the doctor and right when the clock ticked down to the last second, the doctor had to let go and let John Wick finish ditching himself up. And then John Wick had to shoot the doctor twice to make it look real. Yeah, man, he's just talking about it. Remember how much I love this franchise. So later in the interview, Chad Stolesky is asked. Sophia, that's Halle Berry's character, broke the rules when she helped John Wick, John and Wick three. Thus, how worried should we be about her daughter's safety in John Wick? Four. Here is what Chad said. I would be worried for her. But I would trust the fact that Sophia is pretty badass and will do anything she can to protect the people she cares about. Obviously, she's got a fairly good heart to help John the way she did. She chose the code over her own suffering. So first off, I didn't think it was a given that Halle Berry was going to be returning, but this answer to me feels like pretty much confirmation that she'll be back. Controversial opinion, maybe. I don't mind that she's coming back. But and I think her character and the acting and everything about her was as good as it possibly could have been. And it was good. But I love John Wick so much that I didn't need some other really badass person to dilute him. Right. Right. But though the action sequences with her and the dogs. That was awesome. That was really cool. Yeah, I kind of feel similarly. We're really the only complaint I would levy against the Halle Berry action sequences is I think Keanu Reeves at this point has been pretty trained up on at the gunfoo and the kung fu probably does a lot. Well, not probably does a lot of his own stunts. Halle Berry looked great mostly, but there are moments where I think the differential shows where Keanu Reeves is clearly super trained in all this. She did a great job, a way better job than I could do, but not quite as smooth and pro as I think Keanu Reeves. He was also asked if there was going to be a time jump. So chapter two picked up, I think, a couple weeks after chapter one, chapter three picked up immediately after chapter two. Are we going to get a time jump going into chapter four? He refused to answer. Then they switched gears and talked a little bit about the ballerina. So that is the upcoming spinoff that's been announced. And they discussed the ballet troop that was introduced in John Wick three and basically confirmed that. Yes, some of that is going to help set up the ballerina movie. One misconception that that comes up a lot is there was one character in John Wick three in the credits. She was credited as the ballerina. So a lot of people have taken that as, oh, that is the character who will play the ballerina. I don't think that's necessarily the case. That was a pretty actress who's not super well known. She was a background character. So she was generically credited as the ballerina. Safe bet that that ballet troop will be the origins of this ballerina. But I think it's pretty safe bet that ballerina is not the ballerina. I agree. You can follow all that, all that that I was just saying. Also, just an added thing to think about in the context of this, which is the whole ballerina sequence that we saw that whole area with the stage that was happening inside of a larger facility that also had a bunch of guys wrestling, right? That's right. So even if it's called the ballerina, I bet we're going to see a lot more about the training and maybe some of the younger people and the way this organization kind of feeds people into a certain kind of lifestyle. Yeah, definitely another nice little corner of this world that's ripe for world building. So Chad Stolesky, director of all three John Wick movies, is sort of involved in the ballerina as a kind of a consulting role. It sounds a producer, but it's being led by Len Wiseman, that's director of Live Free or Die Hard. In this interview, Chad was asked about the action style in the ballerina. Essentially, what he says is they're going to have the same stunt team and they're going to make sure that it lives up to John Wick standards. But he's going to leave it to Len Wiseman to give it its own style. It's got different characters. They don't want to copy themselves over and over. But it sounds like he's trying to assure us that whatever it looks like, it's going to be up to the John Wick Gun Foo standards. So that's good news, but you sound skeptical. Well, I saw Live Free or Die Hard so long ago and I don't really remember what I thought of it. Specifically, I don't remember what I thought of the action scenes. Right. It was a solid movie. I remember Live Free or Die Hard, solid Die Hard film. Definitely not something. I'm not super jazzed about the fact that Len Wiseman is directing the ballerina. I do think he kind of meets the bar for it could be a very solid movie. What does give me some confidence is Chad is involved. I think he's pretty protective of the franchise. I also think Keanu Reeves is very protective of the John Wick franchise. So I think when Wiseman working with the two of them, they can create something great, but I will say I have a lot more confidence in John Wick 4 than I do in the ballerina. I trust them. I think. Me too. Me too. So far, we'll see. Now, they also touched on the continental. Chad said, I know they're working on it. So this one seems like he's not super involved. He said, I don't know exactly where they're at with it, but I think it's going well. And they touched on the Matrix 4. So like I said, Chad, it was Keanu stuntman for the first three Matrix films. And apparently he's been helping out here and there on the Matrix 4. So that gives me some confidence in the Matrix 4 that at least the action is going to be pretty awesome. Every time I hear the words Matrix 4, I get like a tingle down my spine. I get so excited. Yeah, we did this a couple of weeks ago, but we asked, what are you more excited for? Matrix 4 or John Wick 4? Visually, it's John Wick 4 just because I've rewatched all those movies so many times. And I was I was a kid when I got into the Matrix series, you know, when it first started. So I just recency bias makes me excited for John Wick 4. But I know as Matrix 4 gets closer and closer, like when I'm sitting in that seat in the theater and hopefully it will be in the theater, right? I know I'm going to be super pumped. Yeah, for me, John Wick 4 is the safer bet. I feel like I know it's going to be great. But Matrix 4 has more potential. If it's great, it can be even greater than John Wick 4 just because it's dealing with bigger ideas, science fiction. It's got a lot more room for creativity. I think the Matrix movies, especially the first one, actually had a lasting impact on cinema. Like it caused a change in the way we the action is done in the way that modern in the way. Yeah, and in the way that John Wick did and also the way that we we focus on technology and the role it plays in society. Right. And how we like visualize it in film. And I think it's possible that the Matrix 4 could be just as important historically. Yeah, so that's a really cool thing to look forward to. Yeah, absolutely agree to perp minded in the chat says can't wait for John Wick 4. And I couldn't agree more. So I think with that, any other thoughts on John Wick 4, the ballerina? I I'm excited for all of it. I love these movies. Yeah, me too. Can't wait for all of these movies. So happy Keanu Reeves has had this Keanu Sants and we'll keep an eye on it. And of course, continue to cover it as it develops.