Turns out the stunt crew who worked on the Keanu Reeves–starring John Wick: Chapter 4 left the shoot with more than just bruises on their bodies.
Apparently, the actor made T-shirts for them boasting the number of times they were “killed” over the course of the movie, reports The New York Times in a new story documenting the film’s lengthy action sequence on the 222 steps leading up to Paris’ Sacré-Coeur Basilica. For that particular scene, the production used 35 stunt workers repeatedly.
The crazy thing? Some of them were slain more than 20 times.
The article also features franchise filmmaker Chad Stahelski discussing the weariness on Reeves’ face during the sequence. “That look John Wick gives when he looks at his watch and actually looks up the staircase, I think that’s maybe 50 percent John Wick and 50 percent Keanu Reeves going, ‘Ugh, Stahelski did it to me again,'” said the director, adding, “You got to suffer. That’s what’s fun about John Wick. He suffers and he keeps going.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 has proven to be the most successful entry in the franchise thus far, though whether Reeves will return for a fifth outing remains to be seen.
“I don’t know, I guess I’m going to have to lean on never say never,” Reeves told EW recently. “I mean, I wouldn’t do a John Wick film without Chad Stahelski. We’d have to see what that looked like. For me, it feels really right that John Wick finds peace.”
But John Wick fans will get to see Reeves portray the role at least one more time. The actor plays Wick in the forthcoming spin-off movie Ballerina, directed by Underworld‘s Len Wiseman and starring Ana de Armas.
“They had a great script, and John Wick has a small part to play in it,” said Reeves. “Len Wiseman was cool. He was like, ‘Where do you want to pitch this story in [the] timeline?’ So, it takes place between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 of the John Wick stories. It was fun to put the suit back on.”
