Movies To Watch Out For If You’re a John Wick Fan

As the first awesome action movie in a long time, John Wick has become a genre unto itself. Keanu has ascended to the halls of action gods, alongside Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The series has been going hard since 2014 and chapter four is expected to drop next year, Covid willing. It’s defined by fast kinetic gunfights, brutal takedowns, and ridiculous balls to the wall massacres over the smallest indiscretion. The body count over the three John Wick movies so far is at 299 people. That means, including the runtime for credits, John is killing somebody once a minute (to be accurate, .8 mooks a minute across a total runtime of 367 minutes).

The massive success of these films as a cult hit has seen its name attached to dozens of projects since, hoping that having the director, producer or waterboy from John Wick will somehow rub off some of the star-power the series has generated. When a new action movie drops, its hard not to find comments scrutinising how cool it probably is compared to John Wick.

Let’s take a look at the movies you should put on your watchlist if you’re a fan of John’s.

The Continental

First of all, let’s get the spin offs out of the way. The Continental, as fans know, is a hotel and greenzone sacred to the underworld community in the John Wick universe. It’s a piece of cool world building and an awesome addition to the canon. It’s such an intriguing element that it was announced to get its own TV series in 2017. The idea has been kicked around a lot and, as of April 2021, has been announced to be a 3 part limited series focusing on a young Winston in the 1970s. Winston is the Continental’s Manager, so it would be somewhat of an origin story prior to Wick’s massive kill streak.

Nobody

Bob Odenkirk plays an ex-special forces type who’s tired of getting pushed around. Eventually he is drawn out of retirement as his family is threatened. In a key scene, he screams at somebody to give back his daughter’s kitty cat bracelet while beating them bloody. From the Writer of John Wick 1 and 3, Derek Kolsta, this movie scored a 7.5 on IMDB and a 84% on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

Atomic Blonde

Producer and director David Leitch made his uncredited directorial debut on the first John Wick movie. He went on to direct Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Fast and Furious: Hobbs & Shaw.

Atomic Blonde has since been seen as the spiritual sibling to John Wick. It’s a different tone for sure, but its brutality, when it decides to do it, is on par with Wick. More reserved, but just as cool.

Deadpool 2

Leitch also served as director of Deadpool 2, bringing his kinetic sensibilities to this irreverent superhero series. He also brought Jonathan Eusebio, stunt director along for the ride as well. Reynolds, a massive fan of John Wick, was more than happy to have the director involved in the one good set of movies he’s been in.

Kate

Lietch’s next outing is as producer for Kate, a Netflix film featuring Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She plays an assassin poisoned with only 24 hours to live. That gives her 24 hours to wrecking ball her way through everybody who’s responsible. It’s going to be a neon blood soaked ride of a time. Searching it on Netflix will let you do an alert for when it drops.