Halle Berry confirmed for return to ‘John Wick’ franchise
Oscar-winning actor Halle Berry has been confirmed for a return to the John Wick universe. Berry made her debut in the franchise as Sofia in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Kean Reeves’ on-screen friend. Rumours of Berry’s return have simmered for a while, but director Chad Stahelski has now addressed the topic in conversation with Joe Rogan.
“Yeah. We have actually been in talks several times to try to… I hate the term spinoff,” Stahelski said of Berry’s return in an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “But they are trying to do other satellite projects off the Wick franchise. Hopefully, they’ll be good ones.”
As well as a planned Berry-starring spinoff, a limited series based on The Continental and Ballerina, a movie starring Ana de Armas, is also currently under production.
“It’s funny, Ballerina was sort of a long time coming, also. [Writer] Shay Hatten was like an intern for Robert Downey Jr., I had a general meeting with him, he was a huge John Wick fan, and he wrote Ballerina in a vacuum, like as a spec script,” John Wick producer Erica Lee told Collider earlier this year. “He gave it to me, I want to say, five years ago, and I read it and was like, ‘Okay.’ It was an assassin, Rooney, it was a female character, but we optioned it, and we’re like, ‘Let’s back this into [the] John Wick universe’.”
Adding: “Then we started developing and making it more Wick. But this was before we’d even shot John Wick 3. [There have] been iterations along the way, and as we keep learning more about the universe and creating new characters and refining the Wick world, that enters its way into Ballerina“.
Lee continued: “So, even a year ago, when we were working on the script, it was like, ‘Okay, Winston was sort of there, and the Charon character, and Anjelica Huston, The Director’s character,’ but it was like, ‘What do we know now? What is the state of The Continental? What is the timeline? How are we breaking it? What are the reference points we can use?’ Ballerina is this constantly evolving ecosystem of a movie. It’s just been really fun to work on.”
Ballerina is scheduled to arrive at cinemas on June 7th, 2024. John Wick: Chapter 4 is now available for purchase on selected streaming platforms and will have its physical release on June 13th.
Watch the trailer for John Wick: Chapter 4 below and read our review here.
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