John Wick came out ten years ago, and its directors have been reflecting on issues over Keanu Reeves and his beard ahead of filming.
The action franchise John Wick is celebrating is tenth birthday, remarkably, and from its relatively low budget roots, it’s turned into something of a juggernaut. Four films so far, with spin-off movie Ballerina arriving next year. That, and TV projects too. Not bad.
The original film was directed by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, and in a conversation with Business Insider, they’ve lifted the lid on the arguments surrounding the first movie. It turns out that facial hair, specifically Keanu Reeves’ facial hair, was originally on the list.
Chad Stahelski revealed to the outlet that “we were trying to do a modern-day Greek mythology fantasy movie. That’s not mainstream. So we wanted to do something cool with Keanu.”
The problem was that the people putting the money in didn’t exactly see eye to eye with this idea. They had a version of Keanu Reeves in mind closer to the one we saw in films like Speed and Point Break. “I don’t know if this exists anymore, but at the time we were told by the powers that be you don’t cover up your leading man’s face with a beard” he recalled.
This turned into quite a problem, and the ‘debate’ continued right up until shooting was getting underway. Stahelski and Leitch deliberately wanted to make Keanu Reeves look different to the action stars he’d played before, the financiers did not. The turning point came after a week of shooting and the footage started coming in. Only at that stage was the debate settled.
Which led to another ongoing back and forth over John Wick’s dog in the first film, and pressure coming in to come up with a different ending for the film. You can read more about that at the original piece, here.
Reeves is set to return for John Wick 5 in the future, with facial hair very much in tact. Our podcast episode on the 2014 John Wick movie is here.