‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ robbed us of Keanu Reeves wielding nunchucks on a snowmobile

A producer of John Wick: Chapter 4 has revealed that, despite containing almost as much fighting as it does dialogue, the new film almost featured a scene in which Keanu Reeves wields nunchucks on a snowmobile.

Erica Lee, who served as a producer for the fourth installment of the action franchise, spoke of the discarded scene in an interview with SlashFilm. Lee said the scene was one of many she and director Chad Stahelski had brainstormed during the film’s development, and would see Reeves’ titular character mount the snow vehicle along the slopes of Japan. “Chad and I had lunch one day and he was like, ‘I’m thinking Japan. I’m thinking nunchucks and snow,” Lee recalled of her early conversations with Stahelski. 

“‘Have you seen what they can do with snowmobiles these days?’ And I was like, ‘Okay, we have a movie.’” Though audiences were ultimately robbed of what sounds like a momentous-yet-chilly sequence, Lee said the idea was enough to get “the wheels in [Stahelski’s] brain spinning.” She continued: “we were off to the races at that point.” 

As to why the scene was left on the cutting room floor, Lee said the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed extra time for her and Stahelski to assess which fight sequences were most practical for the film — which managed to squeeze 140 of Wick’s kills within its 169-minute runtime. “Then there was COVID, but the good or the bad of it was that it gave us also some more time to develop the script and work on it,” Lee said. “We had a little bit more time in between than we normally do.” 

While the somewhat bizarre choice of fighting vehicle might not have made an appearance in the recording-breaking box office Chapter 4, Lee teased elsewhere in the interview that a snowmobile will be involved in some capacity in Ballerina, the upcoming spin-off starring Ana de Armas. The Blonde actress will portray an assassin looking to exact revenge on the people who murdered her family, with a release date scheduled for either summer or spring of next year. 

Reeves will make a cameo appearance in Ballerina, which marks one of two spin-offs currently in the works. The Continental, a three-part prequel miniseries exploring the hotel for assasins which Wick patronizes in the movies, will premiere in September, with a cast that includes the likes of Mel Gibson, Colin Woodell, and Peter Greene.