During the promotion of the John Wick TV spinoff, The Continental, director Chad Stahelski disclosed that he is presently developing a tie-in anime series.
Stahelski began his interview with The Playlist by discussing a new, in-development TV show that will air independently of The Continental.
"Lionsgate is having us develop the John Wick TV show, so we thought we could explore The High Table in that a little bit."
He then added, "We’re really excited about [the new spinoff] because we’re doing that and a Japanese anime because I love Japanese anime so much. So to create all the cool stories that anime could achieve better than we could and the TV show to expand our world, we’ll still get our fix, you know what I mean? And we’ll still have all the fun."
With four highly successful Keanu Reeves films and a television prequel already in the works, it appears that Lionsgate is committed to seeing the John Wick franchise expand.
There are a number of popular characters in the franchise including Reeves' titular assassin, Mel Gibson's Cormac O'Connor, Donnie Yen's Caine, Ana de Armas' Ballerina, and Rina Sawayama's Akira so it will be interesting to see if the anime follows one of these characters or introduces someone new.
Since Lionsgate hasn't yet revealed its plans for the anime project, it makes one wonder if Stahelski perhaps revealed too much too soon.
In the U.S., The Continental streams on the Peacock app while internationally, new episodes premiere on Amazon's Prime Video. It's likely that the new anime will also air on one of these streaming platforms.
In the interview, Stahelski reveals that he's a big fan of anime and that certainly lines up with another recently announced project for the director which will see him team with legendary Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe and Studio MAPPA on a new action sci-fi anime for Adult Swim, titled Lazarus. Specifically, Stahelski is working on the action scenes for the series.
You can check out a promo for Lazarus above, which could provide a preview of how a John Wick anime might look.
Elsewhere, Keanu is also working on an anime adaptation of his comic book, BRZRKR with Production I.G. and Netflix so there's precedent for Reeves to be involved with an anime project.
Are you looking forward to more stories from the world of John Wick? Let us know in the comment section below.