John Wick: Chapter 4 doesn’t hit theaters until March 24, but it didn’t stop the pic’s leading man Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski from giving exhibitors at Caesars Palace Colosseum Theatre an early look.
The Tokyo-set trailer opens on John Wick training in a gym. Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King enters, “Are you ready, John?” Natch, he answers, “Yeah.” It’s a new day, new bullies in town. What’s John to do? “I’m going to kill them all” — whether that’s swirling cars around or beating ’em up in art galleries. “I want you to find peace, John,” says Ian McShane’s Winston. “The only path this leads to is death.”
Said Lionsgate Chairman Joe Drake before bringing the duo onstage: “Chad, as you might know, was a stuntman first. It’s rare that people go from driving off cliffs to sitting in the director’s chair… Usually it’s the other way around.”
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He added: “We’d worked with Chad on The Expendables back in 2010. He had the most unique perspective on stunts we’d ever seen. We placed a bet — that Chad’s vision coupled with Keanu’s singular screen presence would rewrite the action genre. And that bet paid off for everybody.
“Moviegoers told us that watching the first Wick was like seeing the genre evolve right before their eyes, with fight scenes crazier and somehow more real than anything they’d ever seen,” Drake said. “Shepherded by Chad in the director’s chair, and the Baba Yaga himself, these incredible filmmakers continue to subvert genre conventions and defy audience expectations. More lore. More inventiveness. Exquisite locations. From the Roman Catacombs, to Halle Berry shooting her way out of Casablanca. From John killing a 7-foot-tall hitman with a library book to horses galloping across the endless sweeping dunes of the Jordan desert”.
The Lionsgate exec added: “That’s how John Wick became more than a beloved franchise — a singular experience and a cultural phenomenon. An original story with no pre-existing fanbase that made it to the big screen, bringing audiences rushing back to the theater for a fourth time.”