The John Wick Spinoff Takes An Important Step Forward

The Ballerina John Wick spinoff movie will begin filming next fall.

By Matthew Creith | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

When Keanu Reeves initially took on the role of John Wick in 2014 in the aptly named original film John Wick, only a handful of critics and would-be fans of the movie believed that the film could spawn several sequels and a media franchise that has taken on new life over the years. Reeves, taking his career in a new direction after The Matrix film series, will again embody the revenge killer in a fourth installment named John Wick: Chapter 4, due to be released in March 2023, but the film that started it all is spinning off into another movie entirely. Now, it appears that the John Wick spin-off, Ballerina, has taken an important step forward, as it has been announced that the movie will begin filming this fall.

ana de armas

According to a report by ComicBook.com, the John Wick spin-off Ballerina will star Ana de Armas and begin filming later this fall for a possible premiere date sometime in late 2023. Cultivating a recent career full of spy roles and action-packed federal agent characters, Ana de Armas is preparing to play a significant part in Ballerina which will become the complete opposite of the biographical film Blonde where she has embodied famous bombshell Marilyn Monroe for Netflix. Recently, Armas has been featured as part of blockbuster projects for Joe and Anthony Russo like The Gray Man with Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling, as well as the James Bond thriller Not Time to Die alongside Daniel Craig.

John Wick’s Ballerina may star Ana de Armas but the plot for the film seems to be shrouded in secrecy for the time being. The only details of the storylines within the movie have to do with Armas’ character being an assassin that seeks revenge against those who killed her family, harkening back to the initial plot of the first John Wick that saw Keanu Reeves taking revenge on those who killed his family and dog. In the third installment, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Academy Award-winning actor Anjelica Huston played Wick’s adoptive mother code-named The Director, who ran a Russian ballet school as a front for an assassin training academy, so having the spin-off named Ballerina might just point to Armas taking on a similar position.

Even though it may seem like Ana de Armas could be playing a younger version of The Director in the John Wick spin-off Ballerina, there have yet to be confirmed reports of this fact and if the new movie will end up being a prequel to the events laid out in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. One thing is for sure; Armas has done well in similar action roles, and she is likely to enjoy her time on screen as a prominent member of an espionage society. After promoting her turn as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, Armas will be filming Ballerina for director Len Wiseman and then promoting the film Ghosted that she stars in with Chris Evans and Adrien Brody, helmed by British director Dexter Fletcher of Eddie the Eagle fame.