It turns out that ‘John Wick’ has always been about working backwards from suffering

In essence, the entire John Wick franchise exists because somebody killed the title hero’s dog. That might be boiling it down to its very essence, but if his pooch didn’t bite the bullet, then we wouldn’t be getting at least four sequels, a spinoff, and a prequel series set to tell Winston’s three-part origin story.

That sounds positively nuts when you break it down like that, and director Chad Stahelski admitted he’d love to make it as far as Chapter 10 should audiences keep turning up in their numbers to see Keanu Reeves shoot, stab, punch, kick, and generally barrel his way through an army of faceless goons.

However, the filmmaker revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that the process is a touch more macabre than coming up with cool action sequences and jumping off from there, with the hitman’s trauma and suffering the starting point that the creative team loves to work backwards from.

“We keep finding new and interesting ways to have John Wick suffer. That’s where the action comes from. Figure out how to make him suffer, and then design backward. We do it chapter by chapter. Just like an author; write the chapter, scratch head, write next chapter.”

Based on the rapturous reception that greeted the CinemaCon footage, it appears as though Reeves, Stahelski, the stunt coordinators and the various unfortunate performers to put themselves through the wringer are poised to continue enhancing John Wick‘s reputation as arguably the single finest action franchise of the 21st Century, based on nothing but the acclaim and adulation to have defined the brand so far.