John Wick Co-creator Chad Stahelski Confirms Anime Prequel Exploring Assassin's Origins

The world of John Wick is expanding once again, but this time in a different medium, i.e., anime. The action thriller film series has cemented its place in modern cinema and to date, four films starring Keanu Reeves as the titular character have been released. Recently, John Wick’s co-creator, Chad Stahelski, also Keanu Reeves’ stunt double in The Matrix films, gave The Hollywood Reporter an exciting update about the upcoming anime.

Stahelski confirmed there will be three projects in the world of John Wick. An anime, a TV show and a spinoff film centred around Donnie Yen’s character, Caine. During his conversation with the media portal, he said, “Right now, we’re knee-deep in development on a feature anime about John Wick. It’s a prequel to the movies, which is awesome. It’s fun that it’s in a different medium.”

Fans of John Wick are well aware that the most intriguing, unresolved mystery in the franchise is the ‘Impossible Task’, leading John Wick to take retirement and disappear from the assassin world. The upcoming anime project promises to shed light on this elusive aspect of his lore. It will also explore Wick’s origin story and his past love life.

When asked whether the prequel would focus on that task specifically, Stahelski confirmed, “You’re pretty right on, but it’s animated fun. It’s meant to be fun. Some of the prequels and sequels you see in other franchises are not meant to be built that way. We just want to have fun. We want to have fun with the Wick world, but we’ve already capped it on one end [with John Wick: Chapter 4], so let’s go back and use a different medium.”

He further discussed he chose this format as it allowed creative freedom, giving them a chance to explore more aspects of the character. “We want to explore different aspects of the world and different aspects of John Wick before the films and through a different medium, whether it’s anime or TV, that feels fun. We can be a little bit more crazy and nutty in the anime and a lot more explicit in our storytelling and world-building on the TV show. So, those are exciting to us without seeming repetitive and that’s where we’re putting our energies right now,” said Stahelski.

The anime’s release date has not yet been confirmed.