The Continental: John Wick TV Show Prequel Casts Mel Gibson
Lionsgate is preparing us a special John Wick event – The Continental – a 3-night special series focused on John Wick’s origin story.
As reported by Deadline, Mel Gibson will star in the show centered around the character played by Keanu Reeves in the movies. Gibson’s character in the show will be named Cormac.
Kevin Beggs, a 22-year veteran of Lionsgate TV, announced the show with these words:
“It’s such a successful franchise, it’s on its way to its fourth and fifth installments as a movie. It’s got such a great mythology and such interesting style, and the gun fu approach of these incredibly poetic stunt esthetics is just out of this world, which is why the movie with Keanu Reeves — who is so amazing in everything he does but particularly compelling as John Wick in our mind — it just cries out to be something in TV. Just like the Marvel Universe and the DC Universe from a TV perspective are incredibly opportunities, and that is our superhero franchise in the family. What we’re exploring in The Continental is the young Winston and how it came to be that he and his team of confederates found their way into this hotel which we have met for the first time in the movie franchise 40 years later. That’s the arena. I won’t give away more than that, but Starz really leaned into this take also, and they have been great collaborators. And how we’ve approached this first season is as three essentially 90-minute events which you could construe as a limited series or a limited event series.”
Created by Derek Kolstad, the John Wick franchise kicked off in 2014 with the original film that was followed by two sequels. The fourth movie is also on the way, and Keanu Reeves said he’ll continue making sequels as long as they’re successful.
John Wick 4 is set to be released in May 2022.
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The Continental is produced for Starz by Lionsgate Television. Greg Coolidge and Kirk Ward will serve as showrunners. The premiere date isn’t known yet.
Source: Deadline