Animated ‘John Wick' Prequel in the Works From ‘Ultraman: Rising' Director, Keanu Reeves Expected to Return
Yeah, we're thinking he's back.
'John Wick' will return – but perhaps not in the way that you'd expect. An animated 'John Wick' prequel is on the way from 'Ultraman: Rising' director Shannon Tindle. Keanu Reeves is expected to return to voice the character in the animated feature.
The announcement was made from the CinemaCon stage by Adam Fogelson, chair of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group.
This animated 'John Wick' will recount the 'impossible task' that Wick had to complete to get out from under the High Table and marry his wife Helen (played in the films by Bridget Moynahan). It will be written by Vanessa Taylor, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work with Guillermo del Toro on 'The Shape of Water.'
The animated feature will be produced by Thunder Road's Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, 87Eleven Entertainment's Chad Stahelski and Reeves. 87Eleven Entertainment's Alex Young and Jason Spitz will executive produce.
Tindle is coming off of the Annie-nominated Netflix film 'Ultraman: Rising,' which featured a beautiful art style that was inspired by the original series and Japanese manga and was brought to life with eye-popping animation from Industrial Light & Magic. Before that, he was the showrunner and executive producer of Netflix's Emmy-winning 'Lost Ollie.' He also created 'Kubo and the Two Strings' for Laika.
Lionsgate promised that the film will 'deliver highly stylized and defined action that 'John Wick' fans expect and will be aimed at more mature audiences,' meaning, yes, this will be rated-R like the live-action films.
Since 2014, there have been four 'John Wick' features. The latest, 'John Wick: Chapter 4,' came out in 2023 and made $440 million worldwide. A prequel streaming series 'The Continental' also premiered in 2023 and the first spinoff film, 'Ballerina,' is out on June 6. Another streaming series, a fifth mainline film and a spinoff centered around Donnie Yen's character are also in development.
Fogelson said, 'In both animation and the world of 'John Wick,' the possibilities are endless. And there is no 'John Wick' story fans are clamoring for more than the Impossible Task. Shannon's take on that story is an incredible one and we are beyond excited to see what John Wick can do in animation.'
Stahelski added, 'I've always been fascinated with anime. It has always been a huge influence on me, especially with the 'John Wick' series. To have the opportunity to develop a 'John Wick' anime seems to be the perfect progression for the 'John Wick' world. I feel 'John Wick' is the perfect property for this medium — anime holds the potential to expand our world, our characters and our action in ways unimaginable before.'
Iwanyk and Lee said, 'Shannon has a breathtaking vision for a film we've all long wanted to make. Alongside Vanessa's story, we're hugely excited to bring it to audiences.'
No timetable for the movie has been revealed.
The post Animated 'John Wick' Prequel in the Works From 'Ultraman: Rising' Director, Keanu Reeves Expected to Return appeared first on TheWrap.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
24 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Co-president of Lionsgate movie studio dies of cancer at 55
Jason Constantine, co-president of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles after a long fight with brain cancer. He was 55. Constantine was a Lionsgate veteran, beginning his career more than 25 years ago at its predecessor company Trimark Pictures as a director of acquisitions, the Santa Monica-based firm said. At Lionsgate, he was involved in several of the Santa Monica-based studio's key franchises, including 'John Wick,' and 'Saw,' which he pushed Lionsgate to acquire early on after watching a brief concept short. He was also closely associated with films including best picture Oscar winner 'Crash' (2004), 'Precious' (2009) and 'Knives Out' (2019). 'With his fearless spirit, creative energy and enduring talent relationships, Jason embodied the very best of our studio and our industry,' Lionsgate said in a statement. 'His career was built around the principles that a great idea can come from anywhere, a box office triumph is meant to be shared by an entire team and our creative choices need to be bold and daring.' Constantine is survived by his wife, Kristin, and his sons Lucas, Xander and Nicholas.
Los Angeles Times
34 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
There's more to Korean music than K-Pop. Young composers show how in L.A. Phil's Seoul Festival
K-pop. Oscar-celebrated cinema. Samsung in the living room. Political urgency in the press. However prominent Korean culture seems to be, there is surprising lack of coverage of the classical scene at large. Already at 21, Yunchan Lim, winner of the 2018 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, has reached superstar status. Myung-Whun Chung, whose conducting career began as an assistant to Carlo Maria Giulini at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1977, was just selected, over a veteran Italian conductor, to head La Scala in Milan with the blessing of Italy's nationalist president, Giorgia Meloni. And now the L.A. Phil has turned to the South Korean capital for an eight-day Seoul Festival as a follow-up to its revelatory Reykjavik and Mexico City festivals. Unsuk Chin, today's best-known Korean composer, is the curator. She is, in fact, today's only Korean composer who's well known internationally. Despite a seeming wealth of renowned performers, Korea remains a musically mysterious land. Most of what happens, even now, in Seoul's classical music scene doesn't roam far from Seoul. The mostly youngish composers and performers in the first L.A. Phil festival event, an exceptional Green Umbrella concert of new music at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, were all discoveries. Korean music is a discovery for much of the world. But California does have a head start. Chin, whose music has a visceral immediacy, has long fit in to L.A., championed by Kent Nagano at Los Angeles Opera and by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel and Susanna Mälkki at the L.A. Phil. Moreover, ancient Korean court music and its instruments became an obsession with the echt-California composer Lou Harrison. Its noble gentility has been subtly adding to the DNA of the California sound. Only two Korean composers before Chin have made an indelible impression on the world stage, and both, as is Chin, became avant-gardist emigres. As outsiders, they have striking relevance. Isang Yun ((1917–1995) had a shocking career. A brilliant pioneering composer who melded traditional Asian music with contemporary techniques, Yun had been briefly arrested for his participation in the Korean independence movement of the early 1940s. He fled to West Germany, where he became a prominent composer before being kidnapped and returned to Korea. Imprisoned, tortured and threatened with a death sentence, he was eventually freed thanks to pressure from a consortium of internationally influential musicians (Igor Stravinsky, György Ligeti and Herbert von Karajan among them) and returned to West Berlin. And then there was Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Though famed for having been the first major video artist, Paik was a classically trained pianist and composer who began his career following in Schoenberg's footsteps by writing 12-tone music. His route to video was an erratic one that began when he fell under the spell of John Cage and became one of the more outrageous members of the anarchic Fluxus art and performance movement. I once asked Paik, who taught briefly at CalArts when it opened, about whether he always considered himself a composer. He said only a yuppie — 'you know, those people who work in a bank during the day and only go to concerts at night' — would think he wasn't. The Yun and Paik zeitgeist of going your own original and expressive sonic way while always being aware of tradition, whether embraced or rejected, pervades Chin, 63, and the generation of Korean composers who came after her and whom she has invited to the festival. Chin herself left Seoul to study with Ligeti in Europe. The Hungarian composer's music, thanks to Salonen's advocacy, is also in the L.A. blood. The orchestra has, of course, had a Ligeti festival. For the Green Umbrella concert, Chin revealed a great range of approaches among the four exceedingly interesting next-generation composers. She also invited a dazzling array of soloists specializing in Western and Korean instruments as well as the magnificent Ensemble TIMF, which joined the L.A. Phil New Music Group. All were making debuts alongside the luminous and poetic young conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi. In the four pieces (each about 15 minutes), Korean, European and American traditions can serve as sources for reinvention. Juri Seo's Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, given a dashing performance by pianist HieYon Choi, consists of short movements that include a jazz fughetta and Schumann-esque romanticism. Sun-Young Pahg's austerely formal 'L'autre moitié de Silence' for daegeum and ensemble featured Hong Yoo as soloist bending notes and bending time on the bamboo flute used in Korean folk and traditional music. In Yie-Eun Chun's spritely Violin Concerto, which was commissioned by the L.A. Phil for the festival, scale-like passages got the Paganini treatment from soloist SooBeen Lee. Dongjin Bae's 'reflective — silky and rough' for standard western flute and spacey strings, another L.A. Phil commission, had an ancient feel with its silences and breathy solos played with enthralling focus by Yubeen Kim. Chin's 'Gougalon (Scenes From a Street Theater),' which ended the program, is a riotous evocation of Hong Kong. Rather than musically reproduce street sounds and people sounds, Chin transforms them into spectacular orchestral chatter. The effect is what their joy must sound like, what their meals must sound like, what their walking and talking and laughing and crying must sound like in a language you don't understand because exhilaration isn't language. All of this is music by distinct personalities, each striving for something sonically personal. Musically mixing East and West dispenses with regulations when crossing borders and becomes an an act of individuality and often resistance. Chun's do-re-me scales become cockeyed before you grasp what's happening. Bae's silky flute, when rough underneath, evoke the feeling you might get when taking a break from Bach an instant before the world's most compelling composer overtakes your own senses. The conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi favors transparency and sensuality at the same time with expressive gestures that seem to magically mold sound. Each piece had different instrumental combinations involving both L.A. Phil and TIMF players. Everything worked. The festival continues with weekend orchestra concerts featuring different mixes of four more new Korean scores commissioned by the L.A. Phil, Chin's 2014 Clarinet Concerto and a pair of Brahms concertos. A chamber music concert with works by Schumann and Brahms played by Korean musicians is the closing event Tuesday. Meanwhile, for a better idea of what Unsuk Chin is up to, last month in Hamburg Kent Nagano conducted the premiere of her new opera, 'The Dark Side of the Moon.' It is a philosophical reflection on the relationship between quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung that profoundly reflects how ideas and traditions interact. It can be watched on YouTube.
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Movie giants bring Hollywood stardust to Flying Roos
Australia's ocean dominance has got a Hollywood upgrade as Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds became co-owners of the country's three-times champion SailGP team, now rebranded as the BONDS Flying Roos. The investment adds star power to the Australian outfit who have dominated the global sailing championship, winning a trio of titles in four seasons of the high-speed racing series. "We're incredibly excited to set sail together in this new adventure," Jackman and Reynolds said in a statement. "Hugh brings a deep love for and pride in his home country as well as being an avid fan of sailing." The move comes just days after Oscar winner Anne Hathaway sailed into sports ownership, joining a female-led consortium who acquired the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team in what circuit CEO Russell Coutts called "another significant milestone in SailGP's growth as a league". Founded in 2019, SailGP pits national crews in identical 50ft foiling catamarans reaching speeds over 54 knots within metres of shorelines in iconic harbours worldwide. "This is an incredible milestone for us and for our sport," said Tom Slingsby, who serves as driver, CEO and co-owner of the Flying Roos. SailGP director Andy Thompson added: "Today marks a landmark moment not just for the Australia team, but for the trajectory of SailGP globally," highlighting the "extraordinary combination of global reach, vision, commercial nous" the Hollywood duo bring. The newly minted Flying Roos will debut under their star-studded ownership at the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix on June 7-8, where they aim to defend their position atop the championship leaderboard.
