Warning: The following article contains spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4.
As the characters in the recently released, incredibly successful Scream VI pointed out, everything is a franchise now. The nexus of capitalism and Hollywood was always bound to end up with an endless churn of subpar content to try and squeeze out every ounce of profitability from intellectual property, but even so, there was some hope that a few universes might escape the endless creep of money-making being more important than creating something good.
With the death of the eponymous badass John Wick in the fourth and (potentially) final installment of the mainline film series, fans might have thought the character and the world he inhabited would finally be given rest. It seems greedy execs and uninspired, lazy writers have other plans, however, as shown by the gratuitous promotion of John Wick spinoff television series The Continental before poor John’s body has even gone cold. And, while the final film did have its critics, especially regarding its mammoth running time, it was a fantastic ending to a gripping story, raising the question: why continue?
Fans are unhappy with the upcoming Peacock series for a number of reasons, and frankly, we can see where they’re coming from. One of the major gripes fans of the John Wick movie series has is that Chad Stahelski, former stuntman and director of the four films starring Keanu Reeves, doesn’t seem to be involved in the project. Much of the credit for John Wick’s incredible action sequences go to Stahelski, who used his know-how and experience as a stuntman to choreograph some of the best fight scenes in modern cinema, even as the plots of the films grew more convoluted.
Other fans have pointed out that this seems to be nothing more than a money grab from Lionsgate, which doesn’t appear to understand the appeal of the Wick films isn’t its weird and wonderful world (as intriguing as that can be), but the brilliant action and gratuitous violence.
Of course, there are plenty of other issues with the production, namely the fact that notorious bigot and general bad man Mel Gibson is set to play a starring role in the limited series. Nowadays, Gibson is known for his antisemitism and homophobia more than his acting, which is the complete opposite of John Wick star Reeves, who’s somewhat of an internet darling thanks to his famously kind personality.
Originally, Stahelski was set to direct the first episode of the series, and, as per Fandom, said he hoped it would serve as an origin story for numerous characters from the film, while also diving into the experiences of the staff who work at the New York hotel that gets razed to the ground in John Wick: Chapter 4. However, at some point, he seems to have been distanced from the project, with Greg Coolidge and Kirk Ward becoming showrunners, while the episodes have been directed by Albert Hughes and Charlotte Brändström.
In an interview with Deadline, Lionsgate Chairman Kevin Beggs confirmed The Continental would be set in the 70s, in New York. He went on to say of the show:
“What we’re exploring in The Continental is the young Winston and how it came to be that he and his team of confederates found their way into this hotel. [The Continental is] about a crumbling New York in the 1970s with a garbage strike that has piled up bags of garbage to the third floor of most brownstones, the mafia muscling in on that business which is why in The Sopranos he’s in the sanitation business. And other things that are really real as an interesting backdrop to explore the origins of The Continental.”
The Continental is set to be released this September, and while we’re sure it will get decent viewing numbers, we’re less convinced it will recapture the magic of the films without Stahelski’s influence.