Keanu Reeves is back once with a big-screen vengeance in “John Wick: Chapter Two”: reprising the role of the titular hitman that you send after the boogeyman. The sequel to the 2014 hit finds Wick’s plans for retirement on hold once more when a contract on his life leads him on a trip to Rome: giving himself the greenlight in taking on the world’s most formidable assassins.
Now, director Chad Stahelski and screenwriter Derek Holstad are not only interested for a third chapter of John Wick, but they and Lionsgate may have given them the greenlight in bringing Wick onto the small screen with a television prequel series.
“Well, we’re not doing a prequel [with Chapter 2],” Stahelski and Holstad told Slashfilm.com. “We wanted to, [but] it just didn’t fit quite where we’re at…We basically almost have a prequel written, but we’d save that for other aspects of the property. Lionsgate is very interested in doing a John Wick TV show, and that seems very appealing to us, to give those creative ideas to that entity, because I think, in TV, you could really expand on what that is, and greater than we could in just a two-hour film. We’d like to wrap-up the story we’re telling now and maybe save our prequel ideas and impossible task ideas for that medium.”
If it comes to fruition and gets picked up, the potential television prequel series will follow John Wick’s bloody journey as the world’s most elite and deadly hitman, and how he has decided to that life behind for a new life with his future wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan, who returns for the second chapter), who became terminally ill and passed away. However, she left behind a gift for her husband in the form of a dog whose death led John Wick on his first bloody mission of retribution against the people responsible for it as well as for breaking into his house and beating him up, and stealing his classic Mustang.
If John Wick does come to television, then it could be a brand-new chapter for him: going from hitman to hero in the form of Batman and “The Equalizer” like brooding ex-government assassin John Reese (Jim Caviezel) from CBS’ “Person of Interest”. The premise: retired and reformed assassin John Wick sets out to redeem himself by becoming an avenger-for-hire, helping the helpless and hopeless, and righting their wrongs as well as the wrongs of his past against the underworld of crime and corruption.
“John Wick: Chapter 2” begins this Friday.