The general manager of the John Wick series, Chad Stahelski, is quite a charismatic man. The 53-year-old director has done the main work behind all four John Wick movies to date, and he doesn’t plan on stopping there because John Wick: Chapter 5production will follow shortly after the release of John Wick: Chapter 4.
In an age of movies where visual effects seem to trump an actual sensible storyline (like the Transformers series that has grossed over $4 billion), director Chad Stahelski chose to go the route of a story-driven action thriller, something he’s invested a lot of time in, and we’re all for.
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Stahelski says the film is a 50/50 game in terms of quality
When you lead or work on a certain project long enough, doing the same thing over and over is bound to get boring.
Chad Stahelski doesn’t want the John Wick series to become bland plot-wise, and he’s sticking to this new philosophy he embraced when making the series’ fourth installment.
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During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stahelski spoke about the quality of the next John Wick: Chapter 4, where he said the film could go both ways in terms of quality. He said-
“Keanu and I talk about it a lot, but doesn’t everyone want to improve in everything they do? So I just tried to put into this film all the things that I’ve improved at over the last two and a half years. Hopefully that will make the movie better, instead of just trying to make bigger explosions and bigger bullshit.
“If I tell a better story, which I think I did, and do my job a little better in all areas, I think the movie will be better. I also know I have an amazing cast. So that’s my philosophy, and I’m going with it. I could be completely wrong. It could be a bombshell, but I’m going to stick with that philosophy for now.
Yes, please stick to this philosophy, we need substance with style.
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The only movie that Chad Stahelski credits his career with
The 2008 speed racer The movie was one of the biggest box office flops, grossing over $93 million from its $120 million budget, but did you know that Chad Stahelski credits the racing movie for what it’s his career today?
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During an interview with Collider, where he talks about the upcoming vampire movie Day shiftStahelski retouched speed racer, and boy did he get a lot of praise for it. He praises the racing movie for being a major learning experience in his career-
“Are you kidding? Yeah, a ton. […] we had just finished all the ‘Matrixes’ and we had done ‘V for Vendetta’ at that time, [and] the Wachowskis came, ‘Hey, we want to do the live-action version of ‘Speed Racer’. […] We are thinking of doing this in a very animated look. Almost with different layers, like these compositing close-ups, but we might need some real driving. […] we will be using motion based systems because we wanted to move the background and other elements as well. […]’ So it became a very different movie, more of a technology movie than a practical movie, which was super interesting for us at that point because we had done so many practical things [effects].”
He sums it up by saying he’s grateful the chance to work on it came to him-
“Thank you, ‘Speed Racer’, [I don’t think I’ve] never learned so much in such a short time.
John Wick: Chapter 4 releases March 24, 2023.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter