Director Chad Stahelski admits that the original cut of John Wick: Chapter 4 felt – and was – a lot, lot longer than the one we’ve ultimately got.
By the time you get to the end of the imminent John Wick: Chapter 4, the best part of three hours of mayhem will have passed before your eyes. The new movie, headlined of course by Keanu Reeves, has an official running time of two hours and 49 minutes, including credits. By distance, it’s the longest film in the saga to date.
It’s no revelation to reveal that first cuts of films tend to be longer than the version we get to see, but still: director Chad Stahelski has opened up about just how long his latest movie actually was.
Chatting to IndieWire, Stahelski confirmed that “our first cut was three hours and 45 minutes”, and more tellingly, “it felt like three hours and 45 minutes. We were like, oh we’re so screwed”.
Working with editor Nathan Orloff, that running time came down of course, but it sounded like quite the process. Orloff talks about it more in the IndieWire piece, that you can find here. Stahelski, for his part, said that “even if we just took 30 seconds out of something, I’d make everybody watch the movie again… That’s the only way you know you have the right pace”.
Given the number of 30 second cuts required to knock nearly an hour off the running time, it sounds like some people have watched John Wick: Chapter 4 a lot of times already….
The film lands in cinemas this weekend.
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