- For the 10th anniversary “John Wick,” BI spoke to directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch.
- They revealed that not everyone was on board with the film’s infamous dog death scene.
- When the movie ran out of money, they found an unlikely savior in Eva Longoria.
In the decade since the release of “John Wick,” critics have hailed the 2014 sleeper hit as one of the best action movies ever made, simultaneously reinvigorating Keanu Reeves’ then-stalling career and the action genre one kick, punch, and gunshot at a time.
Released theatrically through Lionsgate in October 2014, the movie became a surprise box office success, earning over $86 million on a $20 million budget. It spawned a beloved franchise of three sequels, a TV miniseries (“The Continental”), and soon, its first feature film spinoff (“Ballerina”), plus an anime series.
But 10 years ago, the film’s success was far from guaranteed. When directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch sat down for the first public screening of “John Wick” at Fantastic Fest 2014 in Austin, they were prepared for a catastrophe. The movie had already had two disastrous friends and family screenings and little to no interest from buyers. Why would this be any different?
“‘John Wick’ was going straight to video at that point,” Stahelski said, reminiscing over Zoom from his Los Angeles office with a toothpick dangling from his mouth.
“We had a distributor screening a month before, and I walked out thinking, it’s an action movie, someone will at least give us a lowball offer,” Leitch told BI via Zoom from the set of his next movie. (Due to Directors Guild of America rules, Leitch only took a producer credit on “John Wick.”) “We got nothing. We wondered, what’s going to happen?”
At Fantastic Fest, Stahelski, Leitch, and star Keanu Reeves wove through the packed lobby filled with rabid Reeves fans. Stahelski admitted the pre-screening energy was comforting, but as he sat next to Reeves, he was prepared for everyone to be disappointed.
“We wanted to be in the theater because we wanted to take our medicine,” he said.
The movie began, and the audience watched Reeves as the title character, a former hitman grieving over his wife’s death and caring for a small puppy, her final gift to him. When that puppy is killed by the son of a Russian mob kingpin, John Wick dusts off his black suit and pistols, setting out for street justice.
The audience roared in approval at Reeves’ every punch and gunshot — a signature set of choreography that would later be dubbed “gun-fu” — as the newest action hero was born.
“Keanu turned to me and said, ‘Hey, I think they like it!'” Stahelski recalled. “We were blown away.”
“They were really taking the ride as we designed it,” Leitch said. “It felt like, ‘See, we can direct!'”
As “John Wick” celebrates its 10th anniversary this month, BI spoke to Stahelski and Leitch separately about how their love of Greek mythology and martial arts inspired the movie’s tone, why there was a fight behind the scenes over Reeves’ facial hair, and how Eva Longoria came to the rescue when the movie ran out of money.
Keanu Reeves cleverly got Stahelski and Leitch to direct ‘John Wick’
Chad, you have known Keanu for decades going back to when you did stunts for him. You then transitioned with David into being stunt coordinators and second-unit directors, famously for “The Matrix” movies. So, naturally, Keanu came to you and Leitch to be a part of “John Wick.”
Stahelski: Dave and I were pretty busy with our second-unit and stunt-coordinating careers. That was the beginning of DC and Marvel, so we were pretty busy helping everybody and trying to get jobs doing second-unit directing.
Leitch: Kelly McCormick, who is now my wife, she was managing us at the time. She had been trying to find our first directing gig. She had been feeding us scripts here and there.
Stahelski: I hadn’t talked to Keanu in a few months and then got a call from him. He said, “I came across this script, it’s not quite there yet, but I’d love for you to take a read. It’s something I’m thinking about doing.” So he sends it over. I read it. It was originally called “Scorn,” but the script I got was after Keanu did one pass on it. It was a very short script. It was only 65-75 pages. I think at that point only four people die in the whole story. It did have the dog. It had a version of The Continental. But Derek Kolstad, who wrote it, gave it a feel of the Cold War. The guy was a retired vet from the Cold War. It was very, very grounded. Very serious.
Leitch: I was talking to Chad and said, “It’s all action, we should just really ask Keanu if he would consider us directing it.”
Stahelski: I called Keanu back and said, “Listen, I don’t think I can get you a stunt team for the budget the movie is trying to do it at.” But Keanu is a clever dude. He started asking about the script; we’re talking and talking. Then he says, “Would you be interested in doing more? More on the creative?”
I’m super big into Greek mythology and myths. Tolkien was one of my biggest influences. At the time, Dave and I were so into wanting to do something cool with all the martial arts people we knew and all the choreography styles that we wanted to bring in from Asian cinema, but you need the right project to put all of that in. You can’t just get a cool Navy SEAL project and insert Hong Kong martial arts or ninjas. So we always knew we had to create a world.
The next call I have with Keanu, I tell him my ideas of how The Continental is the underworld, and he’s going into Dante’s Inferno, and he’s like, “I fucking love it, want to direct?” [laughs] I called Dave and we didn’t sleep for 48 hours and put together the pitch of how we wanted to do it — the music, gun-fu. We called in every favor and did it all over the weekend. We pitched it to Keanu on Monday. He pitched it to the producer Basil Iwanyk on Tuesday. We had the job on Wednesday.
Everyone hated the ‘gun-fu’ choreography at first
You two wanted to incorporate all these different influences into the fight choreography. When the movie was released, it was described as “gun-fu.” What is its origin?
Leitch: Chad had choreographed a lot of close-quarter fight stuff over the years that would get rejected by directors. So we were cataloging all these great ideas that we had over multiple films. We put [pre-visualization] of that stuff in the pitch. This is what the “John Wick” action is going to look like. No one really let us do it before but it had been simmering for a couple of years.
Stahelski: We had been working with Jason Statham a lot at that time, so we were fascinated with combining punching, kicking, and jiu-jitsu. At the time the action movies were quick takes and shaky camerawork. Like the “Bourne Identity” movies.
We did long, wide takes mainly because of the budget. We literally had to shoot fight sequences in a day. So we did long takes doing the gunplay and close fighting and tried to make it feel like a ballet. Trust me, everybody on the creative side hated the idea. Dave and I had to fight that through production. Once post came and we added the sound and effects, everyone got it.
The John Wick suit is another element that built the film’s mythology. Did that originate in the script stage?
Stahelski: Derek had written him as a guy with a bit of class, but that evolved. John Wick is actually Derek’s grandfather’s name, and he and I have similar Polish grandfathers. Classy guys. For a dinner party, they put on a casual black suit. They knew etiquette very well. That’s where it all started. Dave and I wanted this guy to be a superhero in a way, so the suit was his armor. This was before we realized that for the second movie, the suit would become a very big thing with it being bulletproof. Keanu wears a suit like nobody so that was easy. But we cut the suit a certain way and played with lines; we knew we wanted it stylized.
The education I got with the Wachowskis for 10 years of making “Matrix” movies was that everything matters. They would watch the fashion channel every day at lunch. I caught them watching it one time and asked what they were doing, and Lana was like, “Look at the dress, look at how her hips move, it changes posture,” and I never forgot that lesson. You never truly bring the characters to life until they are in the wardrobe. Keanu putting on the suit for the first time in the movie, he’s becoming John Wick.
There were battles behind the scenes over Reeves keeping his beard and the puppy dog death scene
Is it true you guys had to fight with the financiers to keep a beard on John Wick?
Stahelski: Absolutely. We were trying to do a modern-day Greek mythology fantasy movie. That’s not mainstream. So we wanted to do something cool with Keanu. But the money people, they wanted to see Keanu fucking Reeves. “Point Break” Keanu, “Speed” Keanu. And I don’t know if this exists anymore, but at the time we were told by the powers that be you don’t cover up your leading man’s face with a beard.
Leitch: I don’t want to get into it, but since then I have had contentious conversations about stars having facial hair. “He needs to be clean-shaven for international!” That’s the classic studio line.
Stahelski: We wanted people to think, “Oh, this is not the Keanu we know.” We caught a lot of shit. But we felt you can’t fire us, so first day of shooting, we had Keanu in the beard, and later that week, when they watched the dailies, with cinematographer Jonathan Sela’s now famous half-light shots, people fucking loved it.
Was everyone on the movie okay with the puppy death scene?
Leitch: We were told, “It’s bad luck.” “It’s bad juju.” “It’s ‘Old Yeller,’ you can’t do this!” “No one will want to see this on screen; you’re going to alienate the audience.” And I’m like, “We’re going to execute people at close range; killing the dog is one thing, but what about the brutal massacre of all these human beings? Are they going to be able to accept that?”
They didn’t understand that we were making a genre movie. We are genre fans to the core, and we know those hard-boiled moments are what make memorable moments.
Stahelski: Dave and I were very in sync on how we were going to shoot the scene. We were going to use a baby lens; John gets hit hard in the head, so it’s going to be dream-like; the dog death happens off-camera, and all you are going to see in the aftermath is this trail of the blood making it look like the puppy tried to crawl to him.
So on the day, Keanu was acting with a stuffed dog. Crying. He’s all beat up. He looks awful in his pajamas. Everyone behind the monitors must have thought, “Okay, this is the worst idea; these first-time directors are done.” For the next couple of weeks it was suggested that we shoot an alternative ending revealing that the puppy actually isn’t dead. But Keanu stood up for us. And Basil stood up to the investors, and eventually, they just felt, “Fuck it, let’s see what these guys can do.”
The movie’s ending was almost very different — until Leitch and Stahelski decided it should be more hopeful
David, you and Chad could not share director credit as the Directors Guild of America only allows that for directorial “teams” and decided you two didn’t fall in that category. What led to the decision of who would take the director credit?
Leitch: It was like, “Chad, you take this one and I’ll take the next one.” We figured we’d probably direct together again. The DGA thing was brutal on all of us; we codirected this to its core. We directed second-unit together in the past with the Wachowskis, so we had a rhythm of how we worked as a team and it was really fun to do this together.
I was really bummed that the DGA didn’t see that. It’s an asinine rule that they have, and maybe they should, for the tenth anniversary of the movie, change that. It’s pretty fucking obvious after a decade that we both are accomplished storytellers. It was super frustrating. (Ed note: The DGA declined to comment for this story.)
Did you shoot an ending where John Wick dies?
Stahelski: I’m a big “Shane” guy. I loved “Shane.” Being an audience member, I don’t want to be force-fed shit. I like things open. So me and Dave and Keanu talked about this a lot. We felt live or die, it doesn’t matter, it’s John versus John Wick; that’s the story we’re telling. It’s a day in the life of this guy who is all twisted up and can’t experience grief. That was the initial ending.
But then it evolved. As much as we wanted to be hardcore and just kill him, it didn’t feel complete. We didn’t want a happy ending, but we wanted something that shows hope.
Leitch: There were a lot of ways to end this movie “Shane” style. Crashing the car and laying there bloody. I don’t remember why we left with hope because we didn’t think there would be a sequel. I don’t think that was in our heads when we made the movie. We just felt like this is the end of the story. There’s a little redemption in that, and he gets a dog, and the dog represents his life; he can start over again. The moral of the tale is you can survive this trauma.
Eva Longoria saved the movie with a last-minute investment
Why is Eva Longoria a producer on this movie?
Stahelski: We were less than a week out and we lost almost $6 million on a gap financing. We were financing independently to get the bond, but one of the investors couldn’t raise the money in time. Me, Keanu, and Dave had deferred, Basil had maxed his three credit cards, we all had put in everything, including Keanu. And we were still short. So we were shut down.
Leitch: CAA, which was putting the financing together, they offered the opportunity to some actors who had some bankroll. “You’ll be first out of this waterfall, you’ll get your money back then X amount.” Eva was like, “Cool!”
Stahelski: She came to the rescue and she provided the gap financing. We didn’t know any of this. Basil never told Keanu or us. Literally less than 24 hours before we had to lock the doors on the movie and walk away, Basil said, “We’ve got the investor, we’ve locked the gap.”
We found out by the end of the movie, Basil took us out to dinner, and we were laughing about all the bullshit that happened, and he said, “By the way, funny story, you know who gap financed you? Eva Longoria.” We were were like, “What!” Once the movie got big, Dave and I met Eva. We had never met her before. We took her out to lunch at Chateau Marmont and she was laughing going, “I didn’t think it was going to work.”
Leitch: During the award season last year, I ran into her on two different occasions at Academy events, and we were reminiscing. She was like, “Wow, that was the best money I’ve ever spent.” It paid back significantly for her.
Stahelski would sign on to do another ‘John Wick’ sequel tomorrow if the right idea came along
David, you’ve gone on to make successful action movies like “Atomic Blonde,” “Deadpool 2,” “Hobbs & Shaw,” and “The Fall Guy,” but I would imagine “John Wick” is close to your heart.
Leitch: That movie was so much from our DNA and had a moment of redefining action, but that was because of our unique experience as not only second-unit directors but we were also martial arts nuts, Kung-fu fans, fight choreographers. We created a brand of action that can really only be executed by us. When you look at a Tarantino film it feels like a Tarantino film, and “John Wick” is an expression of Chad and I collectively.
Then moving forward, Chad has made that specifically his own. When the first action scene happens you know that’s Stahelski’s work. No one else can choreograph that and shoot it like that and make it exciting.
Chad, you’ve made four “John Wick” movies. Are you now ready to move on from this franchise?
Stahelski: When you fall in love you fall in love. I’m in love with John Wick. I’m in love with the process and the story. Keanu and I are both like, if we wake up tomorrow and there’s a good idea, we’re doing it. You can bet your ass.
Another “John Wick” movie?
Stahelski: Yeah. If we felt we weren’t ripping the fans off and had more to give, I’d do it tomorrow. I just don’t have that right now. The other stuff I’m working on are great properties, and I’m excited, but nothing is going to beat this.
What was it about the John Wick character that made you give a decade-plus of your life to it?
Stahelski: Honestly, it’s not like we read it and a light bulb went off. It was a series of accidental successes. It was a series of choices, wants, desires, arguments. The movie we had initially in mind was at least 50% the movie that came out of it. But we learned a lot. We figured we had to go for it. It was a good way to create a platform for us to do what we thought we were good at.
But at the same time, Dave and I had a chip on our shoulders. We wanted to create a different kind of character. The stories you hear about me and Keanu going to the whiteboard and listing the 20 things we hate about action movies and the 20 things we love, I have a photo of that love side of the board and still look at it to this day.
Yes, it’s absolutely true that when we finished “John Wick: Chapter 2” Keanu and I were like, “We’re done.” But we keep coming back because when you start going out and looking at the other jobs, you realize the freedom you had. It became addictive to me.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
