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Director Chad Stahelski: John Wick Franchise Plans Anime
posted on by Egan Loo
The Playlist quoted Stahelski, “So we're really looking forward to that [second television series]; we're really excited about that because … we're doing a John Wick anime because I love Japanese anime so much. So to create all the cool stories that anime could probably achieve better than we could and the TV show to expand that world, and we'll still get our fix, you know what I mean? And have all the fun.”
Stahelski directed all four John Wick films from 2014 until this year. He also produced next year's Ballerina spinoff film, although he was not involved in The Continental. He is designing the action sequences for Lazarus, Shinichiro Watanabe and MAPPA's science-fiction action anime for Adult Swim. Before directing films, Stahelski was a stunt performer on the live-action Fist of the North Star film and the supervising stunt coordinator on the live-action Speed Racer film.
Variety reported in 2020 that Derek Kolstad, the writer of the first three John Wick films, is writing and producing a Splinter Cell "anime series" for Netflix and Ubisoft. Deadline reported that he is also developing a live-action film of Kouta Hirano's Hellsing manga with Amazon Studios, and that he wrote a script for a live-action film of Sega's Streets of Rage game. John Wick star Keanu Reeves wrote the BRZRKR comic series which Production I.G is adapting into an anime series for Netflix.
Update: The Playlist has since posted The Discouse episode featuring Stahelski. The quote from Stahelski above has been updated to be more accurate to the original audio.
Source: The Playlist (Rodrigo Perez) via Tor
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