I love John Wick trivia almost as much as I love the outrageously violent franchise. The little footnotes we learn are just so damn silly. For example: John Wick is only called John Wick because Keanu Reeves couldn’t remember the actual title. Another example: only three people were originally supposed to die in the first film. Three.
Speaking to Comicbook.com, director Chad Stahelski described what the original vibe of the film was before he boarded the project.
According to Stahelski, who is also a stuntman, the original script was rather… “contained”.
“I think only three people died in the original script, two were in a car crash,” he said. “It was very, very minimal, and it was slightly different.”
Stahelski didn’t purposely think about upping the kill count though, he just saw a different vision for the movie. And by the time filming wrapped on John Wick, the kill count had risen from three to 77.
In the second film, it rose again to 128. In #3, the magic number is 94.
Three, can you imagine if John only killed three people?
This guy?
The film’s distributor Lionsgate recently announced a fifth instalment in the franchise. The fourth flick was supposed to come out next year, but was pushed way back because of the pandemic. So Lionsgate plans to film the fourth movie back-to-back with the fifth.
Oh, and the film was originally titled Scorn… which doesn’t quite have the same oomph to it as ~ John Wick ~ does. So I guess that worked out for the best then.
Long live the Baba Yaga.
You can find the first three films on Netflix now.
