Keanu Reeves has signed to voice John Wick in Lionsgate’s animated prequel film. The studio announced the greenlight on Thursday, November 5th, during its quarterly earnings call. That is the new fact. When Lionsgate unveiled the project at CinemaCon in April of last year, The Hollywood Reporter said Reeves was only “expected” to voice the character. Now he has a deal and he is a producer too. The story is the “Impossible Task”, the job that freed Wick from the High Table so he could be with Helen. The task is described as killing all of his rivals in a single night. The films have only ever talked about that night and this one will dramatize it.
Shannon Tindle directs from a script by Ryan and Kaz Firpo, who co-wrote Marvel’s “Eternals”. Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee of Thunder Road produce with Chad Stahelski of 87Eleven Entertainment and Reeves. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Point Grey joins as a new partner. The film is already in preproduction. Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer noted that in comments after the earnings report, according to Deadline. The film is still untitled and has no release date. No animation studio has been named, and no other voice cast has been announced, not even for Helen, who was played in the films by Bridget Moynahan. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for the first two “John Wick” films and the end of “John Wick: Chapter 4”.
Keanu Reeves has signed to voice John Wick in Lionsgate’s animated prequel film. The studio announced the greenlight on Thursday, November 5th, during its quarterly earnings call.”
Tindle’s background is deep in animation, and none of it proves he can handle gun-fu. He directed Netflix’s “Ultraman: Rising” and holds a story credit on LAIKA’s “Kubo and the Two Strings”, according to TheWrap. TheWrap also credits him with Netflix’s “Lost Ollie” and notes that Industrial Light & Magic animated both Netflix projects. Which studio animates this one is the biggest open question. Lionsgate tried to settle the worry about tone early. At CinemaCon the studio promised “highly stylized and defined action” and said the film would be “aimed at more mature audiences”, as TheWrap reported. Stahelski added that anime “has always been a huge influence on me, especially with the John Wick series”, that “John Wick is the perfect property for this medium” and that anime “holds the potential to expand our world”. He has worked in the medium before, since Slashfilm notes he choreographed the action for the anime “Ninja Kamui” and worked as action sequences designer on “Lazarus”. That is the bar, and an animated “John Wick” that flinches from the violence would defeat the point of making it.
One name from that first announcement is gone. At CinemaCon the script belonged to Vanessa Taylor, the co-writer of “The Shape of Water”, and Iwanyk and Lee spoke of “Alongside Vanessa’s story” in their joint statement. This week’s reports credit the Firpos instead, and World of Reel says they replace Taylor. Lionsgate has not said why the writer changed. The framing has also firmed up. In October 2024 Stahelski answered “Ish” when The Hollywood Reporter asked if the anime was the Impossible Task, and the outlet wrote that it would show “at least some” of it. Now the premise is the task itself. Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Adam Fogelson sold it at CinemaCon on one idea, that “there is no John Wick story fans are clamoring for more than the Impossible Task.”
The first film’s entire account of the Impossible Task is one speech. Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist) delivers it to his son Iosef (Alfie Allen), who has just stolen John’s car and killed his dog a few days after Helen’s death. Viggo calls John “a man of focus, commitment, sheer will” and says he once asked to leave. Viggo gives the reason in one line, “it’s over a woman, of course”, and never names Helen. “So I made a deal with him”, Viggo says. He calls it “an impossible task” and “a job no one could have pulled off”. Then he gives the line the prequel has to honor. “The bodies he buried that day laid the foundation of what we are now.” The same speech also holds the pencil, the three men in a bar and the Boogeyman, so the prequel inherits a legend as well as a night. The film never shows those bodies. Its script never says “High Table” either. That name arrives in Chapter 2, and this week’s descriptions of the task lean on it. The prequel has to bridge a gang boss’s deal and a council that the first film never mentions.
The second film adds another pair of hands to that night. Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) turns up at John’s house to call in a marker, and he reminds Wick that “if not for what I did on the night of your impossible task, you wouldn’t be here right now”, then leans on the debt. A marker is a blood oath. Santino helped, and Wick paid with his word. In Santino’s telling it started with Wick: “You came to me. I helped you.” So the canon already holds two claims about one night. Viggo set the job, and Santino helped finish it. A prequel has to carry Viggo’s deal, Santino’s help and the High Table obligation without contradicting any line the films have already delivered. That is a hard brief, and it is the reason this could not have been a quick flashback.
Animation fixes a problem live action cannot. Chapter 4 ended with Wick dead, and a prequel is the one place a living Wick is not a cheat. Stahelski has been blunt about the logic. Asked by The Hollywood Reporter in June of last year about a live-action prequel, he said he and Reeves “are not interested in going backwards”. With the anime, he added, “you don’t have to de-age”. He also said that “you accept anime in its own language without explanations.” Reeves signing means the prequel keeps his voice at the center and nobody has to digitally shave years off his face to get there.
A fifth live-action “John Wick” film remains in development. Reeves’s most recent turn as Wick was a brief one in “Ballerina”, so the prequel would be his first full turn as the character since Chapter 4. Donnie Yen’s spinoff “Caine” shot from April to July and takes place after Chapter 4, TheWrap reports. World of Reel adds that it is now in post-production. Everything else in motion moves forward from that ending, and this prequel is the one project that goes back. It is the cleanest piece of the plan, because it needs no stunt work and no excuse for a dead hero. It also carries the most risk. If the Impossible Task is shown badly, a decade of fans’ imagination is spent on one bad night.
What Do You Think? Does an animated “John Wick” belong in the canon, or is it a side trip? Should the film show Viggo’s deal, Santino’s help, or both? And is the Impossible Task a story you wanted to see, or one better left as a legend?
See you on the next binge!
