Keanu Reeves read John Wick script in ’90 minutes’ and made snap decision

John Wick, the 2014 hit movie starring Keanu Reeves as a retired hitman, quickly became a fan-favourite action movie, with many deeming it the actor’s best performance.

However, Reeves wasn’t always going to be the star of the movie, especially due to the original age of the protagonist who was much older than the actor.

A new book details the making of John Wick and discusses Reeves’ decision to take on the role after reading the script in just 90 minutes.

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Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Lionsgate

John Wick was meant to be much older

In They Shouldn’t Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu, and the New Age of Action, Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman detail how John Wick was originally meant to be a lot older than he ended up being. Around 40 years older to be precise.

Franchise producer Basil Iwanyk says in the book that the lead in the original John Wick script, written by Derek Kolstad, was 75-years-old. However, they still gave a script to Reeves, who was described by Iwanyk as “one of the great action stars of the last 25 years,” despite him not being the same age as the character.

After reading the script, Reeves decided that he would play the character as a 35-year-old, which Kolstad agreed with. Thus, the John Wick we know and love, was born.

Photo by Greg Doherty/Getty Images

Reeves “got his talons in”

Reeves quickly got his talons into the script, being a “voracious script reader,” and made it his own. Kolstad explained that he spent two months of weekends with Reeves working on the script.

Kolstad recounted entering Reeves’ office for the first time and seeing stacks of screenplays on the actor’s desk.

“I see he has three hundred screenplays stacked on his desk, because he reads everything that UTA, WME, William Morris sends out. He reads them all. And so think that he read something on a Friday, in ninety minutes, and was like, ‘I want to do it’,” he says in the book.

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Why did Reeves choose to do John Wick?

The script was brought to Reeves with the idea that he would be a part of “such a great collaboration.”

Reeves said: “We all agreed on the potential of the project. It has this character of John Wick, but then you also have the real world, and at the same time this kind of underworld. This den of thieves that have this honor and a code.”

The actor “loved” the quest that Wick goes on to reclaim his life and “the world he moves through to do it.”
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