Keanu Reeves is back in John Wick: Chapter 4 image

Well, he's back. Again!

The public got a nice, candlelit look at Keanu Reeves as the titular assassin in John Wick: Chapter 4 today via an image tweeted from the franchise's official Twitter account. Is he resting? Praying? Waiting to have his beard trimmed? We'll know when the action fourquel is released is released March 23, 2023.

Lionsgate Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4

John Wick: Chapter 4 is once again directed by Chad Stahelski, who has overseen all of the movies in the franchise up to this point. The film's cast also includes Laurence Fishburne, Ian McShane, Bill Skarsgård, and action legend Donnie Yen. The latter plays an old friend of Reeves' super-assassin, who shares a history and many of the same enemies with Wick.

"We are very lucky to have Donnie Yen join the franchise," Stahelski said in a statement last year, when the actor's casting was announced. "I am looking forward to working with him in this exciting new role."

Reeves first played the assassin in 2014's surprise hit John Wick despite the role originally having been written for a seventy-five-year-old.

"The lead was a seventy-five-year-old man, twenty-five years after being retired. It was the fun of watching Clint Eastwood kick ass," franchise producer Basil Iwanyk recalls in the just-published book They Shouldn't Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu, and the New Age of Action, by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. "I thought, Okay, there's probably one or two names you could do this with: Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford. Other than that, I'm not sure how I put this movie together. But the tone of the script for John Wick was subversive and really fun. It has a very clear emotional through line and a great premise for an action movie."

The role was rewritten after Reeves showed an interest in playing the part.

As John Wick screenwriter Derek Kolstad reveals in They Shouldn't Have Killed His Dog, "The first thing that Keanu said to me was, 'Okay, Derek, I'm going to play him 35.' And I'm like, 'Fine.'"

See that image of Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4 below.

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