While Peacock’s The Continental already exists as a John Wick spinoff, Chad Stahelski and his team had very little to do with it, something the filmmaker wants to rectify with his own show(s).
Stahelski was a recent guest on The Discourse podcast, where he confirmed he had little to do with The Continental (which isn’t a surprise, if you’ve seen The Continental), and talked about two other Wick projects in the works.
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One of those is a TV show, where he plans to explore the High Table a little bit more, though he was clear that the series wouldn’t be a reveal-all about the secret assassin organization. “Austin Powers mocked it so well,” he said. “An actual table with the stereotypes tropes of evil from different ethnicities from all over the world. We’re never going to show the whole High Table; we’ll show the representatives, but we’ll always keep some of that [mystery].”
The show, instead, would be a vehicle to delve into characters we saw in John Wick 4, including Donnie Yen’s Caine, Shamier Anderson’s The Tracker, and Rina Sawayama’s Akira. “I think TV is a better format for that,” he said, “because people can jump into the backgrounds, you don’t have to spend so much time with the first act set up and all that.”
In addition to a live-action series, Stahelski also shared that an anime project was in the works. He also said that the thing that excited him most about working in television was the challenge of getting deeper into worldbuilding while still having things happen. “I think, for TV especially, worldbuilding and action, those two have stayed pretty separate,” he explained. “But to try and combine them and give fans [both]? Look, I love the slow burn too, but after six episodes, I would like something to happen in my TV shows, you know? So, to try and bring that to TV, what we do with features would be really exciting.”
Last but not least, the director also confirmed what we already knew, that John Wick is a portal fantasy. “I think that’s some of the critiques that the films don’t get,” he said. “They’re meant to be love letters to things that—yes, we know it’s Bugs Bunny, it’s supposed to be Lord of The Rings, it’s fantasy. Like, are you really going to question me about the existence of orcs, magic swords, or rope that unties itself and invisibility cloaks? Yes, John Wick has that too. The funny thing is bulletproof suits do exist. We’re doing a campfire tale. We’re a modern-day fantasy, so it’s supposed to be fun, and it’s supposed to be a little nutty.”
