The John Wick mythos is about to be cracked wide open thanks to the imminent release of John Wick: Chapter 4. As the titular assassin prepares to scale his Mount Olympus in the form of facing down the High Table, he’ll also have to get ready to pull a Marco Polo and set off on a globetrotting jaunt as Continental regulars continue to emerge from every corner of the world.
One such location he’ll be visiting is Osaka, one of the cities that houses a Continental Hotel; a fitting destination given the franchise debuts of Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada, two heavyweights of Asian cinema whose success has taken marked root in Hollywood as well through Yen in the likes of Rogue One and Mulan, Sanada in such works as Bullet Train, Mortal Kombat, Army of the Dead, and even Avengers: Endgame.
Chapter 4 will see these two square off in what’s sure to be one of the best duels in the entire movie; it certainly sounds to be the case according to one half of the matchup. In an interview with /Film, Sanada lauded the creative freedom that him and Yen were given which went a long way given their backgrounds.
“Yeah, it was a great cooperation with him. We both had the experience to create the action scenes, and also we know what the important things are in the action scenes. So we put some ideas together, and Chad just gave us freedom, watching us and enjoying the chemical reaction between us with our different fighting styles, different backgrounds, all at once.”
Though we can’t wait for this matchup between Scorpion and Ip Man themselves, it’s hard to say exactly why they’ll be fighting in the first place. We know that Yen will be portraying Caine, a High Table assassin, while Sanada will be playing Shimazu Koji, the owner of the Osaka Continental, but we also know that both characters are old friends of the titular hitman, and given that the worldwide bounty on Wick’s head is enough to turn any old friend against him, it remains to be seen who will be on his side, if anyone is at all.
John Wick: Chapter 4 will release to theaters on March 24.