John Wick Originally Had A Different Name, But Keanu Kept Messing It Up

Can you imagine your favorite movie franchise being called something completely different? That was almost the case with John Wick. Movie names change all the time and in-development projects usually have working titles that are later dropped, so that shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Except in this case it was a goof-up on Keanu Reeves’ part that led to the revision.

John Wick was almost called Scorn, which does seem to be the character’s primary motivation throughout the film. But according to writer Derek Kolstad, Keanu kept referring to the film as John Wick and that’s how action movie history was made. In yet another example of the good-natured actor’s charisma, the studio didn’t intervene to correct him and just decided to adopt the character’s name as the official title.

“The only reason it’s called John Wick is that Keanu kept referring to it as John Wick,” Kolstad says, adding, “Marketing was like, ‘Dude, that’s four to five million dollars in free advertising so far, so it’s John Wick instead of Scorn.’ I can’t imagine it being Scorn now.”

Kolstad also said that the fourth movie has yet to be titled and revealed that the decision will most likely be left to director Chad Stahelski, who also landed on John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum for the third one. But who knows, maybe Keanu Reeves will have a hand in accidentally naming the subtitle of chapter four?

The fourth film in the series was originally scheduled for release next year, but with the current state of things, the studio decided to push it forward to 2020. Which means it’ll be a while before Baba Yaga gets to contribute to his outrageously high kill count.

Of course, John Wick has become a pop culture juggernaut at this point and the movies may even go beyond five sequels. So, maybe they can save the Scorn moniker for another spinoff, which seems inevitable at this point, with multiple franchise expansions already in the works.