Why John Wick Almost Went Straight to DVD/Blu-Ray

Captain Midnight [Applause] this video is brought to you by brilliant so I loved John Wick chapter 4. it felt like the culmination of everything the series has been reaching for since that very first movie it looks incredible the fight choreography just continues to evolve and in a world of conveyor belt action sequences that feel more like obligations than something the filmmaker is excited about staging Wick stands out with its clever inventiveness and reverence for the Hong Kong action films of the 80s and 90s and after a decade of action movies trying to ape the wick style to varying degrees of success I think it's safe to say that John Wick has had a pretty massive influence on the genre as a whole but instead of just reviewing the latest movie I wanted to do something a little different this week tell the story of how the series began because I think it's one of the more fascinating stories in modern Hollywood in many ways the first John Wick was counted out by the industry before it was even released and according to producer basil I wanek the film even came close to not getting a theatrical release at all I've already covered the career of Keanu Reeves in the past I'll try to place a link to it down below but in this one I really wanted to hone in specifically on that first John Wick the unique way it came about why it had a difficult time getting released and how it ended up surprising just about everyone [Music] Jonathan will find this place you must know that on the surface there's nothing all that original to the premise of John Wick even screenwriter Derek Kolstad would probably admit that as he says he came up with the idea from watching old Revenge movies and basically riffing on them colstad had churned through dozens and dozens of screenplays in his career as a screenwriter since the early 2000s he didn't have any major produced successes but he had carved out a niche for himself he wrote scripts for low budget Dolph Lundgren action films like One in the Chamber and the package and he was still very much working in that mold when he wrote the screenplay for John Wick in about four days I read that screenplay recently and it's interesting just how different it is from the film that we ended up getting for one thing the movie was supposed to be titled scorn and had a lot more of John Wick's backstory though tokolstad's credit a lot of the most fun and interesting elements of WIC like the assassin Hotel the Continental or the gold coins that everyone in this world seemed to use are very much present in this screenplay but it wasn't those elements that initially caught the eye of the producer it was of course that dog Revenge movies are a dime a dozen but what First stuck out to producer ironic was how the screenplay opened by establishing that Wick's now dead wife gave him a dog originally named moose here who is then killed that struck a nerve as ironic believed that it would have a deep impact on the audience beyond the usual dead family Revenge cliches I mean who doesn't love their dog the script was sold and was soon being shopped around everywhere mostly though to much much older actors because John Wick was supposed to be about 75 years old with colstad envisioning a Clint Eastwood type this screenplay even has a scene where it's explained that John fought in Vietnam where he served five tours of Duty that might sound strange in retrospect but it makes a lot of sense considering where the action movie landscape was back in the early 2010s Liam Neeson's taken films were still riding high at the box office and movies like The Equalizer were on the way old guy action films were definitely having a real moment of course that element of the script was dropped once Keanu Reeves became interested in the project Reeves also made the very smart choice to reach out to Chad stachelski and David Leach two stuntmen that he worked with on The Matrix Reeves had been friends with both them for years and knew they both had strong opinions on action filmmaking and what Hollywood was and wasn't doing right eventually John Wick was greenlit with a 30 million dollar budget which isn't all that much for an action movie especially one attempting to be as visually unique as John Wick the directors had a very specific vision in mind for the look and style of the film which meant they prioritized getting the right locations over almost everything else opting to shoot on location education in New York City instead of cheaper alternatives New York didn't make it easy for them since the action had to be done as non-intrusively as possible which meant that cars couldn't even go over the speed limit during filming but the location shooting definitely ended up being worth it lending a sense of scale and credibility to Wix heightened well-designed world that made the film stand out from the usual action movie filming went relatively smoothly outside of the miserably cold climax which was apparently just awful to shoot but for producer basil iwinick things were close to spiraling out of control turns out he wasn't actually used to putting together film financing himself and the financiers were proving so unreliable that he considered canceling the entire movie a week before shooting began and even when it started he was pretty uneasy saying when your first week of footage is Keanu brooding in his pajamas around the house getting a dog again pouring coffee and looking longingly out window you're like is someone gonna shoot somebody what's going on here but it was the first big fight scene and shooting John's conversation with a cop early on that convinced him that the directors knew exactly what they were doing and the tone they were going for Keanu Reeves brought a real sense of Gravitas and world wariness to John Wick the directors brought their years of experience as stuntmen and a love of movie history shooting for maximum visual Clarity during the action sequences with cinematographer Jonathan Sela to avoid what they saw as the shaky cam confusing style of mini 2000's action films and production designer Dan Lee came in with incredibly specific and inspired ideas when it came to the look of this underground world of Assassins but I think the most unsung hero of John Wick may just be editor Elizabeth Ronald's daughter before WIC she had mostly just done TV movies and very very low budget dramas So Not only was she working in a new genre but there was also no money for reshoot so the footage which she had was really it and she went to work in a big way carving out a lot of dialogue from the film that she deemed unnecessary she believed the lack of dialogue added to the character saying I think that's one of his charms he becomes this mysterious figure she also made the case that John's grieving life with his dog and just generally everything before the action starts should be shaved down as much as possible when it was originally nearly a 30 minute long part of the film according to her quote we're not making an action movie slash kitchen drama we're elevating the action drama you go into it knowing it has to be precise her work paid off immediately with the now far leaner cut of the film being shown to a couple test audiences who loved the movie leaving the production team confident that they had a movie with big potential on their hands so they set up screenings for film Executives right away in the hopes of Landing a pretty big distribution deal but to put it mildly things did not go as expected according to ionic quote it was a disaster in fact there was a fox acquisition executive that was sitting in the middle seat of the middle row that got up like half an hour into the movie and walked out because he hated it we didn't get one offer for the movie now they did eventually land a deal with Lionsgate but it was for no money up front and without even a guarantee that the film would be released theatrically by that point it seemed producer ironic was thinking of WIC as almost a liability since it seemed so despised by film Executives saying all I could say was okay John Wick will come out it will play on streaming or direct a video at least I have sicario as long as I get through John Wick where no one notices who cares that seems nuts in hindsight but to be fair to the executive who probably don't deserve it Keanu Reeves was on a real cold streak at the time with his directorial debut The Man of Tai Chi and the expensive fantasy action epic 47 Ronin both flopping at the box office critics though really ended up disagreeing with those execs about WIC as the film went on to be extremely well reviewed and over performed at the box office against pretty modest expectations now it didn't immediately set the world on fire or anything but it was a textbook Word of Mouth hit with it having a long life after it left theaters personally I sought at a dollar theater in Orlando a few weeks after its release and was kind of Blown Away you know it was actually the same theater I saw 47 Ronin in and the two movies really couldn't have been more different with John Wick feeling like the exact breath of fresh air that the action genre needed and though many films that came after it would try similar things like nobody which was also written by Derek Kolstad or Atomic blonde which was directed by Wix uncredited co-director David Leach the John Wick franchise has proven to be pretty untouchable when it comes to staging action it marked a new era for Keanu Reeves career as well helping cement him as one of the Premier action stars of the past 30 years which makes it feel pretty fitting that he was responsible for so many important aspects of the film not only did he advocate for his former stuntmen to direct but he also changed its name he apparently hated the title scorn and when referring to the film and interviews would only call it John Wick Lionsgate followed suit and the title was born now nearly a decade and four movies later it's hard to imagine it any other way if there's anything more complex than the lore of John Wick it's math and that's why I always used to find it so intimidating growing up but now thanks to brilliant I know it doesn't have to be that way it's easier than ever to tackle the subject because brilliant does a great job of meeting me where I am on those topics I know for me the one I love returning to is math fundamentals which hones my skills at the exact kind of math problems that used to really frustrate me brilliant helps you tackle math science and computer science Concepts like Ai and neural networks in a highly interactive way there's thousands of lessons on here with Nuance being added constantly and spending just 30 minutes a day or so on them is both fun and is really easy to work into my schedule plus with brilliant you can really learn and dig into this stuff without breaking the bank or taking out some predatory loan so go to brilliant.org midnight and try it for free with a 30-day free free trial and the first 200 people who go to that link will get 20 off the annual premium subscription [Music] here's a special tip for the fellas and girls who have not already joined Captain Midnight's new 1940 flight Patrol you'd better hurry up and join at once because there's a big adventure ahead the thing to do now is to get started because we're going to have not only barrels of fun but loads of free gifts and prizes too

Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 323,758

Keywords: John Wick, Chapter 4, 2014, Keanu Reeves, 2023, john wick 4, john wick 1, captain midnight, captainmidnight, trailer, analysis, viggo, behind the scenes

Id: Hgl0sq9Hd0s

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 08 2023