“If we come back, we can’t just do the same thing.”

Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves speak onstage. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for SXSW

After four critical and box office triumphs with the John Wick franchise, stuntman turned director Chad Stahelski is taking a well-deserved hiatus from the bloody escapades of the dog-loving hitman in order to focus on other film projects like Rainbow Six, a remake of Highlander, and an adaptation of The Ghost of Tsushima.

While those movies take shape, he’ll step into the advisory role of producer on the Wick action series, which will continue to expand in a pair of spinoffs — Peacock’s The Continental and Ballerina — over the next year.

Still, the big question remains: Is there going to be a John Wick: Chapter 5? Stahelski hasn’t ruled it out completely and while the filmmaker does have a mental bank of stunt ideas he wasn’t able to realize on previous entries, there isn’t a concrete storyline in place.

John Wick director has stunt ideas for possible Chapter 5

“I don’t have a take right now,” he confessed to Empire for the magazine’s August 2023 issue. “But I could wake up tomorrow and have a cool idea that I’d pitch to Keanu [Reeves], or he would pitch to me, and it might hit that chord of, ‘Oh my God, we got to do this right now.’ I have scenes, I have action sequences in my head that we haven’t used yet that I’d love to do. If we do come back, we can’t just do the same thing. I gotta do my homework. I gotta get better.”

If that narrative epiphany does come along, there’s then the matter of whether Stahelski will direct or not.

Ian McShane as Winston, Keanu Reeves as John Wick, and Chad Stahelski – Director in John Wick: Chapter 4. Photo: Murray Close/Lionsgate

Stahelski isn’t opposed to handing off the franchise reigns “if somebody I’ve never met before walks in that door” and blows him away with an extraordinary pitch. “It’d be worth the talk,” he added, going on to qualify that hypothetical statement with: “But I’m very selfish and jealous. I’m a control freak. I want to smack you just for suggesting it. [Laughs] Like, how dare you? Of course I want to do it.”

At the same time, Stahelski is content with the way Chapter 4 “completed the circle, so-to-speak” by allowing John to finally escape his obligations to the High Table through death… or at least the appearance of death.

“I think it’s pretty good closure for the series,” he concluded. “And then there’s the competitor, or the real director in me who goes, ‘F*** it, let’s see if we can do it.’ It’s very appealing. I just don’t have the ‘why’ yet. But that doesn’t mean we should stop looking.”