All John Wick 3 Rumors And Spoilers Leaked So Far

It wasn't that long ago that Keanu Reeves made his first appearance as headshot-happy, dog-loving hitman John Wick in the critically acclaimed film of the same name, but the world that the character inhabits has expanded considerably since 2014, and will be expanding a whole lot more in the near future. There's already a line of comic books slowly revealing more about Wick's shadowy past, and the assassin-friendly hotel at the center of the John Wick universe will be the setting of a new TV spinoff, currently in the pipeline at Starz. Both are exciting projects, but it's Reeves' third outing as the steely anti-hero that everyone's really waiting for.

When 2017's John Wick: Chapter 2 outperformed its predecessor both critically and commercially, Chapter 3 seemed pretty much inevitable, and before long the people involved in the franchise had confirmed that it was indeed happening. There have been plenty of reveals about the upcoming sequel since then, and we've got them all right here. From returning characters and exotic filming locations to production schedules and release dates, this is everything we know about John Wick: Chapter 3.

The biggest obstacle in getting John Wick: Chapter 3 off the ground was always going to be convincing Keanu Reeves to reprise the titular role again. As he found out with The Matrix trilogy, third time isn't always a charm. Luckily for John Wick fans, Reeves adores the franchise and has been expressing his interest in a third film since before the second one had even been released. In February 2018, the actor told Entertainment Weekly that he was "absolutely" on board for John Wick: Chapter 3.

"I love the character and the world," Reeves said. "Whether or not I get the chance to do another chapter is really up to the audience. If they enjoy what we did [in Chapter 2] — and hopefully they do, fingers-crossed, I really dig it — but if they do enjoy it, then I'll have the chance to continue the story of the character and the world." Audiences did enjoy it (85 percent of them, according to Rotten Tomatoes), and Reeves got his wish.

The creative team behind the first two movies is also returning, various reports have confirmed. Derek Kolstad (writer of the first two John Wick movies) came aboard in summer 2017 according to The Hollywood Reporter, and Chad Stahelski (who co-directed John Wick and helmed Chapter 2 solo) was revealed as director by ThatHashtagShow sources in January 2018. OmegaUnderground confirmed that production designer Kevin Kavanaugh (The Dark Knight Rises, John Wick: Chapter 2) has also agreed to come back.

Stahelski has been talking about where he'd like to go with John Wick: Chapter 3 since as far back as 2016, when he revealed that he'd already been approached by Lionsgate about continuing the character's story. "The studio has asked us to put our heads together and see if we can come up with something," he told Collider at New York Comic Con. When pressed for details, the director revealed that two characters who have been on the periphery of proceedings so far were going to play bigger roles in John Wick: Chapter 3.

"Winston [Ian McShane] is a big part of the next one, so is Lance Reddick," Stahelski revealed. "We've got some ideas." McShane's character Winston is the owner of The Continental, a hotel that acts as a neutral territory for working assassins. Lance Reddick plays Charon, the concierge at The Continental. Wick was excommunicated from the hotel for conducting business on its grounds in Chapter 2, but judging from these early comments from Stahelski, it doesn't look like he's done with the secretive underworld establishment just yet.

On top of Winston and Charon, hitman Cassian (Common), the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) and mute assassin Ares (Ruby Rose) are all preparing to reprise their roles, according to ThatHashtagShow. The last time we saw Rose's character, she was bleeding out in a hall of mirrors after making the mistake of fighting John Wick, though it seems she managed to get out alive.

John Wick's work took him to Rome in Chapter 2, and according to Chad Stahelski, the infamous hitman will be on the move once again during his third outing. "We talked about the U.K., Paris," the director told DigitalSpy. "We'd love to do the Middle East and Asia, those are our hot spots. Something like that will gestate, I'm sure." Wick doing his thing in Asia would be a sight to see, but as far as Keanu Reeves is concerned, the character should be heading to Israel.

"I think we need to go to Jerusalem," the actor told IGN. "I think we need to keep going, open up [the world]. I see some scene with John in the desert, just doing some wacky thing." Judging from producer Basil Iwanyk's interview with Collider, Jerusalem would definitely fit the bill. "We're trying to figure out what is older and more mythic than Rome," he said after emphatically ruling out sending Wick to China.

It appears as though Reeves got his wish — there will be a scene with Wick in the desert, though it won't be in Israel. Toward the end of 2018, the leading man and his co-star Halle Berry were spotted filming in Morocco, the North African gateway to the Sahara Desert. An exclusive shot of the two side-by-side on the sand dunes was released by Entertainment Weekly in December. Berry in particular seems to have fallen in love with the place, as Vogue Arabia proudly reports.

The opinions of Reeves and Stahelski are all well and good, but it ultimately falls to Derek Kolstad to shape Wick's journey. The screenwriter has also discussed taking the character to new shores, but his city of choice isn't Paris or Jerusalem, it's Tokyo. "One of the things I would love John to do in the third one is to be excommunicated, broke, begging in Tokyo or some corner of the Earth that's sexy and cool," Kolstad said on The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith podcast (via NerdReactor).

The scribe went on to reveal that he envisioned Wick having a defining character moment in the Japanese megacity. "He stumbles upon something that has nothing to do with his journey and he does the right thing," Kolstad explained. "I don't know what that is yet, but I love the idea that John Wick has done everything for him — but if you notice in both movies, he's actually doing stuff for other people."

Recent reports suggest that Kolstad went with his gut feeling and set at least some of the film in Japan, as Hiroyuki Sanada has apparently joined the cast as the central antagonist — he will play the boss of a Japanese crime syndicate, according to ThatHashtagShow. Sanada and Reeves became friends co-starring in samurai flop 47 Ronin, for which the Canadian learned perfect Japanese. "The first time Keanu spoke in Japanese it was a very important scene between us and — more than the dialogue's meaning — I was moved," Sanada told Collider.

The first two John Wick movies were rightfully lauded for their no-nonsense, super stylish action sequences, but what really sets the franchise apart from other shoot-em-ups is the fascinating mythology woven into them. While 2014's John Wick was a straight-up revenge flick, the 2017 sequel fleshed out the mysterious world of professional killers considerably, revealing the existence of an all-powerful council of assassins and crime lords known as "The High Table."

"The High Table was something that came about from discussions between Chad [Stahelski] and I about alluding to the John Wick onion," screenwriter Derek Kolstad told Inverse. "We had a firm foundation beneath us in the first movie, and in the sequel we needed to build over that world and peel back the layers." Kolstad revealed that early drafts of John Wick: Chapter 2 went "in-depth" on the inner workings of the High Table, but in the end he decided that it was "too much for one story."

Luckily, Kolstad's interview seemed to indicate that John Wick: Chapter 3 will go into much more detail about this central assassins authority, and the film's director later confirmed this. "We are going to put in something about the High Table, how that all works," Stahelski told The Independent. Reeves also teased the High Table's involvement in Chapter 3 during an interview with Empire, hinting at a possible conflict with The Continental. "Maybe John is the activator of this confrontation, and perhaps there's a war," he said. "Wouldn't that be awesome?"

Knowing more about the hierarchy of hitmen at work all around Wick is certainly an exciting prospect, but what about the man himself? We're now two chapters into his tale, and yet we still know very little about Wick's past, outside of passing comments from his peers. We've heard about a so-called "impossible task" that he managed to complete for late mob boss Viggo Tarasov, but the only thing we know about it for sure is that it involved a lot of Viggo's competitors biting the bullet. While we may never get to see the gory details of Wick's impossible task unfold onscreen, Stahelski has confirmed that John Wick: Chapter 3 will at least shed some light on how he came to be known as the man you send to kill the Boogeyman.

"We're going to put in something about where John comes from, and where he wants to go," the director told The Independent. "In the third one, we'll be able to show what he's like as the predator, what he would have been like before the first one." For those that simply can't wait until the second sequel drops, the John Wick comics are a great head start. They begin long before the events of the movies in a time when Wick is still studying the Book of Rules (the text that "guides their lethal business") and mastering the art of the kill.

In 2017, The Independent asked Chad Stahelski if Parabellum was going to be the final John Wick movie, and his response wasn't exactly encouraging. "In our minds, yes," the filmmaker said. "But I'll let the studio answer those sort of questions... I don't want to say too much more, but it will be a nice completion to Mr. Wick's journey." The fact that he ultimately left the decision with the studio suggested that there was still a chance Reeves could return, but at the time Lionsgate seemed more interested in doing more John Wick movies without the character.

In July 2017, the studio purchased a screenplay called Ballerina with the intention of releasing it as a John Wick spinoff, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The script is "in the vein of La Femme Nikita [...] but with a more pulpy, hyper-stylized bent, a la Quentin Tarantino." There's been little news on the project since, however, and as the release of the third John Wick movie draws ever nearer, the conversation about a potential fourth installment continues to grow — largely led by Stahelski himself.

"I enjoy making these movies because there's no limit," the helmer told Entertainment Weekly in December 2018. "We create our own mythology, and we have a studio that both stays out of our way and supports us on the wacky decisions. If people go see the [third] movie, and it makes money, and they came back to us, Keanu and I have ideas for days."

The chances of a straight-up sequel to John Wick: Chapter 3 happening do seem small at this stage, but that doesn't mean that Keanu Reeves will never play the character again. In January 2018, Starz (owned by John Wick studio Lionsgate) confirmed that it was developing The Continental, a TV series based on the hotel that Wick and various other assassins frequent. The network announced the news at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour (via The Hollywood Reporter), revealing that Reeves would not be the star of the show but would still reprise the role for the odd appearance.

"This series is truly unlike anything else on TV," Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said of the project. "The Continental promises to include the thunderous fight sequences and intensely staged shootouts between professional assassins and their targets that fans have come to expect in the John Wick movie franchise as well as introduce some new, darkly compelling characters who inhabit this underground world." Most of the off-camera team that brought the movies to life will be involved in the series, and they'll be joined by Chris Collins (Sons of Anarchy, The Wire). Collins is said to be writing the scripts and will also act as showrunner, THR reports.

When the official cast list for John Wick: Chapter 3 was revealed in June 2018, most of the headlines revolved around the addition of Halle Berry. The former Bond girl will join the Wick universe as Sofia, described as "a woman on a mission." Anjelica Huston is another notable newcomer, while Asia Kate Dillon (Orange is the New Black) and Jason Mantzoukas (Transparent) are also set to join the carnage. One name that didn't get much attention is Stefaniya Makarova, a comparatively little-known actress who's been cast as a character simply named "ballet instructor."

As previously mentioned, Lionsgate purchased a screenplay named Ballerina in July 2017, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio was planning to make it into a John Wick spinoff. Could Makarova (a New York-based actress, model and dancer, according to her Instagram bio) be the deadly Ballerina from Shay Hatten's script? As it stands, Chapter 3 might be Reeves' last John Wick movie, so it would make a lot of sense to introduce the character they expect to take his place in future films.

John Wick fans were delighted to see the hitman's big-eyed pitbull return to his side in Chapter 2. The badly wounded Wick rescued the animal from a waterfront clinic at the end of the first movie as a replacement for his dearly departed beagle puppy, Daisy. A video has emerged from the set of Chapter 3 that confirms the nameless pitbull is back again, and the footage in question places Wick back at the Continental. While the man himself isn't in the shot, the clip shows his four-legged friend exiting the front doors of the hotel and taking off down the street.

Speaking to MTV after the release of Chapter 2, director Chad Stahelski revealed that the dog they used (whose name is Burton) was a pleasure to work with. "You need a little bit of patience, because the dog doesn't know it's a movie," he said. "Luckily, the trainers we had were fantastic. Burton — the dog that we were using — was great. He was actually, I think, a rescue that the trainers got and trained. By far, for a pitbull, the most gentle personality you could ever imagine. He was a very patient dog."

When the official synopsis for John Wick: Chapter 3 was posted in April 2018, it pretty much confirmed what we already knew given the ending of the previous installment — Wick is a wanted man. "He's being hunted for a global $14 million dollar open contract on his life, and for breaking a central rule: taking a life on Continental Hotel grounds," reads the synopsis (via Collider). "John should have already been executed, except the Continental's manager, Winston, has given him a one-hour grace period before he's 'Excommunicado' — membership revoked, banned from all services and cut off from other members. John uses the service industry to stay alive as he fights and kills his way out of New York City."

The cast and crew might have been openly discussing sending Wick to exotic destinations, but fleeing New York clearly isn't going to be straightforward, even for him. Reeves has been spotted wandering around the city in a bloodied shirt, and some set footage obtained by Hollywood Pipeline shows him filming a knife fight with Mark Dacascos (presumably another assassin out for the bounty on Wick's head) right in the middle of a crowded Grand Central Station. Close-ups of that scene reveal that Reeves has a cover over his ring finger, which suggests that the VFX team are going to remove it later. He will inevitably escape the Big Apple, but it doesn't look like he'll make it out in one piece.

Wick will need to go underground to escape from NYC, and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) can help him quite literally do just that. After being spared by Wick many years ago, Fishburne's character rose through the ranks of the criminal underworld and ended up as the head of a network of assassins who stay hidden in plain sight, dressing as homeless people and using New York's network of sewers to move around. The Bowery King avoids using traditional lines of communication, trusting his homing pigeons to deliver his messages.

More footage leaked from the set of John Wick: Chapter 3 shows Fishburne releasing one of his birds just before being cut down by Mark Dacascos, who slashes him across the front twice with what appears to be a large blade. The Bowery King is likely to be one of Wick's only allies this time out, and it looks as though he's going to pay the ultimate price for helping him out. Chances are he was using his pigeon to send Wick one last message before he was taken out. Mute assassin Ares (Ruby Rose) is also present in the scene, clearly back on the hunt for Wick after he left her for dead in Chapter 2.

For a while, most of us assumed that the third John Wick film would follow a trend set by the second one and go by the name John Wick: Chapter 3. But when Omega Underground reported that the working title had been changed from Alpha Cop to Parabellum, the new title raised some questions. Coming Soon took these questions directly to the star of the franchise, asking Keanu Reeves outright if the title was going to be John Wick: Chapter 3 or John Wick: Parabellum. 

"It's both," he said, revealing that the official title of his third outing as the titular hitman would in fact be called John Wick 3: Parabellum.

When Coming Soon pressed Reeves for more details on the meaning of this title, the actor explained that the word Parabellum is derived from a well-known Latin phrase, the meaning of which couldn't be more fitting for the John Wick franchise. "It's part of that famous sentence, 'Si vis pacem, para bellum,' which translates as, 'If you want peace, prepare for war,'" Reeves said. Preparing for war is exactly what Wick (who, as you'll recall, has a $14 million contract out on his life) will be doing during the opening moments of John Wick 3: Parabellum.

In June 2018, the official John Wick Twitter account revealed that Halle Berry had joined the cast of the third film as a character named Sofia. The announcement was accompanied by a promo image of Berry flanked by two dogs, along with a caption that said Sofia was "a woman on a mission," but that's all we learned. The photo confirmed that Sofia, like Wick, is a dog person, but it wasn't until Keanu Reeves sat down with Coming Soon that we finally got to know a bit more about her role.

"John Wick is fighting for his life and thinks that Halle Berry's character has some information for him," Reeves revealed. "They have a past, and they get involved with the High Table, this kind of overlording entity." Reeves once again mentioned that there's history between John and Sofia when the cast and crew spoke to Entertainment Weekly in December 2018, but the director of the movie went one step further, revealing that Berry's two "canine assistants" are a reminder of a lost love.

"Whereas John's puppy was symbolic of his wife, Halle's two dogs are symbolic of someone she's lost," Chad Stahelski said. "They work very well tactically." The filmmaker let slip that there's an entire action sequence based around the two Belgian Malinois dogs, and judging from the high-octane workout routine that Berry has been sticking to, it seems pretty likely that Sofia is an old colleague (and perhaps even an old flame) from the assassin game.

When the first John Wick came out in 2014, part of the fascination with the movie was based around the sheer number of people that the dispatched over the course of 101 brutal and bloody minutes. A popular YouTube video had the total number at 76, but that turned out to be inaccurate. When John Wick stunt coordinator and co-director David Leitch spoke to Empire magazine, he confirmed that the actual kill count was higher still.

"That number's a little light," he said (via CinemaBlend). "I saw that video, but they forgot to count the guys in the various SUVs he crashed and blew up. If you include them then it's actually 84." That number rose to 128 in 2017's John Wick: Chapter 2, with Wick using any means necessary to survive during the sequel — this incredibly detailed infographic breaks down each kill and the method used, from the type of weapon to Wick's accuracy with it. It doesn't make good reading for the people out to get Wick, and there'll be plenty of those around in the third film, which will apparently push the boat out even further.

According Chad Stahelski, Chapter 3 will have the highest kill count yet, with Wick set to make even more corpses than he did in the previous instalment. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the director confirmed that the final death count will "land slightly north" of Chapter 2. "This one, I'm already looking for janitorial jobs," he joked.

We've known for quite some time that Anjelica Huston (star of the Addams Family films and one of Wes Anderson's many muses) is appearing in John Wick 3: Parabellum, but it wasn't until Christmas Eve 2018 that the importance of her role in the movie started to become apparent. It was then that Empire released an exclusive image of Huston in character, sitting opposite John Wick in a shady room looking as glam as ever in a blood-red outfit. According to Keanu Reeves, Huston's character "The Director" is a member of the High Table with ties to a group of traveling assassins.  

"We're trying to make it that there are different tribes, less nondescript assassins," said Reeves. "Anjelica Huston is playing this Roma Ruska character." The Roma Ruska people (also known as the "Xaladitka Roma," meaning Gypsy soldiers) are widespread throughout Russia, found everywhere from the Polish territories in the west to the border with China in the east. They have a reputation for being extremely tough — in fact, they are the only Roma group who actively enlist in the Russian Army.

It seems as though there'll be a group of Ruska Roma assassins led by Huston in the third movie, and Wick himself might even be one of them. When director Chad Stahelski spoke to Entertainment Weekly, he confirmed that Huston's character is "someone who was responsible for [Wick's] upbringing and his protection." Does this mean Wick was raised Roma?

Another interesting fact about the Ruska Roma people is that they're known to be good with horses, and John Wick is clearly an expert — how else could he escape two men on motorcycles while on horseback? In October 2018, Chad Stahelski released an official image from John Wick 3: Parabellum in which the titular assassin is riding a black steed between moving cars on a busy New York road, with masked men (presumably out to collect the bounty on Wick's head) in hot pursuit.

This might seem a bit far-fetched to those who have never been to New York, but there are plenty of horses in the city, whether they're taking tourists around Central Park or being ridden by NYPD mounted unit officers. According to Stahelski, the third chapter in the John Wick story will include a number of animals, including "horses, dogs, cats, a raven [and] a bunch of pigeons." We know Wick is a dog person (this franchise wouldn't exist if he wasn't), and the man who plays him clearly loves dogs in real life, but how comfortable is Keanu Reeves around horses?

Judging from some behind the scenes footage posted to Twitter in 2018, the actor is very comfortable indeed when it comes to being on horseback. Reeves and his stuntman are both on set for the horse scene, though it's clear that the Matrix star has filmed at least some of the chase himself.

His past may still be shrouded in mystery, but there's one thing that we know for sure about John Wick — the guy knows how to take a beating. The first movie opens with him spilling out of a car, bleeding and half dead. If behind the scenes footage from the Parabellum shoot is anything to go by, Wick will start the third movie in a similar fashion.

The Daily Mail were among the many outlets that shared a video of Reeves running/limping through the streets of New York with blood all over his trademark white shirt. We're used to seeing Wick all beat up at this point, and that's very much by design. "I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell's mythologies of the hero and what he would have defined as the theater of pain, or sometimes we call it 'The Die Hard Conundrum': We just to like to beat the [stuffing] out of our heroes," Chad Stahelski said in January 2019. The stuntman-turned-director was speaking with USA Today, who clearly decided to use "stuffing" instead of a different word, but you get the idea.

"If you choose that kind of lifestyle, you're going to be pretty beat up," Stahelski continued. "So we like John Wick to suffer and think Keanu loves for John Wick to suffer, too." Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Reeves confirmed that the action literally picks up where Chapter 2 left off, with Wick in direct danger of being assassinated — and it "goes crazy from there."