John Wick 4 will be longest film in series, says director

Longer runtimes have become a trademark of modern-day movies, and John Wick 4 is no exception to the rule.

During an interview with Collider, director Chad Stahelski revealed that the upcoming film will be the longest film in the series to date.

"It's longer than the other three, but not that long," he shared.

While no clear runtime was given, that would put the fourth entry at least 131 minutes, or 2 hours 11 minutes, long, based on John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum.

By comparison, John Wick Chapter 2 and the original movie clocked in 122 minutes and 101 minutes respectively.

John Wick 4 isn't due to arrive until 2023, but it seems to be incredibly close to completion.

"We're on the final stretch for picture lock, and then we have our VFX music," said Stahelski.

"But this is the furthest along I've ever been, this much in post. We love the music that we've got so far. We still have Tyler Bates doing the composition on some of the bigger sequences.

"VFX are going to be coming in throughout the rest of the year. But we're dangerously close. In our edit, as far as our picture lock goes, we're within a few minutes of locking.

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"Our sequences are done. The movie is essentially done. There's probably another few weeks of tweaking overall, then we lock picture, and we're about music sound and the effects," he added.

Apart from a first-look image and a trailer debut, however, next to nothing is known about the movie's story just yet.

Even Stahelski himself isn't spared from this lacking knowledge of the unknown, stating that there's still a bit of work to be done with the ending.

"There's one [action sequence] for the end of the film that I think we've almost got figured out, so we can be initiating, so I'll have an end of the movie," he explained.

John Wick 4 is currently slated to premiere on May 23, 2024, with Keanu Reeves reprising his role as the titular assassin.

Joining him are Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Japanese-British pop singer Rina Sawayama, Hiroyuki Sanada (Army of the Dead), Marko Zaror (From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series), Shamier Anderson (Wynonna Earp), Bill Skarsgård (It: Chapter Two), Scott Adkins (The Bourne Ultimatum), and Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption).

This article was first published in Geek Culture.