New Details Revealed For John Wick Series The Continental

The planned series set in the world of John Wick centered on The Continental is moving forward, and new details have been revealed for the show. While he was speaking with Deadline, Lionsgate TV chairman Kevin Beggs discussed the plans fot the spinoff series which is in development with Lionsgate’s sister company Starz.

It’s such a successful franchise, it’s on its way to its fourth and fifth installments as a movie,” Beggs said of the film series. “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.”

Beggs said that their goal was to find a way that didn’t cancel out any other plans” that Lionsgate’s film division had for future films, and worked closely with them to do so. He noted, “We took a lot of pitches, and then the creative team from this obscure little show called Wayne that was on YouTube came to us with their take. We were really blown away because it solved a bunch of problems and was super exciting, about a crumbling New York in the 1970s with a garbage strike that has piled up bags of garbage to the third floor of most brownstones, the mafia muscling in on that business which is why in The Sopranos he’s in the sanitation business, and other things that are really real as an interesting backdrop to explore the origins of The Continental which is famously within the movie franchise the assassin’s hotel in which you cannot kill anyone on the hotel grounds, but of course if you step one foot off you’re fair game, and that’s employed to great effect in many of the plots in the movies. Running all of that is Winston, who is played by Ian McShane (in the movies).”

As for the concept, he said that the series is about “the young Winston and how it [The Continental] 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.” He confirmed that Keanu Reeves is in talks to executive produce the series, but will not appear in the series.

“We are in the John Wick universe, but it’s way back in time,” he said. “Think about the Game of Thrones prequels before you know any of the players, but you do know the world. But Keanu and Chad have read every draft and been enthusiastic supporters of expanding this universe in a meaningful way. So, I never rule out anything, but at this point he’s pretty busy making his movies which are very important to us.”