14 DAY TRIAL // In the years of “The Matrix” trilogy, Keanu Reeves was one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood, a sort of Robert Downey Jr. of our times. These days, Keanu hardly does any big studio movies and it’s not because he chooses it.
Though you can’t say he’s been idling away, because he kept working all these years and even made his directorial debut, there’s no denying that his star power has faded considerably. To put it bluntly, there where it matters, at the box office, he’s no longer delivering.
All that will hopefully change with “John Wick,” which will premiere this Friday, October 24, 2014.
The offers have dried up
In “John Wick,” Keanu plays some kind of assassin-type who likes nothing better to do with his day than spend it with Daisy, the cute beagle dog his late wife gave to him as a final present. So when Daisy is taken from him, and in such a brutal fashion, he goes back into the game, determined to find those responsible and make them pay.
This film too was shot independently and only afterwards acquired by Lionsgate, which handles international distribution. Asked by IndieWire if this is a conscious choice he’s making, that of doing indie projects instead of studio films, the actor is blunt: he’d do both if he still got offers for the latter.
So no, it’s not a choice.
“The last studio movie I did was ‘47 Ronin,’ but before that it had been a long time – probably ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still.’ So I haven't been getting many offers from the studios,” he explains. He’s honest in his next reply as well: he’s not OK with it.
“It sucks, but it's just the way it is. You can have positive and negative experiences, but what I like about studios are the resources and the worlds that they can create. Obviously, a lot of good filmmakers work on studio movies. Even when I was working on studio movies more often, I was always doing independent movies. So for me, that was just not happening, but I want to keep going, making things, and telling stories. I want to be able to do that – to be an actor, a director, to produce, you know? If we're going to do a delineation between studio and independent [films], I was always hoping to do both,” Reeves says.
“John Wick” could mean Reeves’ comeback at the top of the box office charts
“John Wick” is already generating a lot of positive buzz, with industry insiders even promising that it will be the action movie to put Reeves back on the map, in the sense that he’ll be mainstream again, which, in turn, would mean more studio offers for him.
You can find the official trailer embedded below, at the end of this article. The movie also stars Alfie Allen, Ian McShane, Willem Defoe, Michael Nyqvist, John Leguizamo, and Bridget Moynahan, and is produced by the producers on “The Town,” which starred Ben Affleck on a script he also wrote.
The movie looks fun and action-packed, in a way that only a Keanu Reeves movie can look, so it stands great chances of being a hit with fans. The idea that sets all the drama in motion (never harm Keanu’s dog) might seem a bit silly at first (after all, who kills so many people over a pet dog, no matter how much they love it?), but it will probably be better explained in the film.
As a bonus, there’s also a video of Keanu’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, in which he answers totally random questions and also reveals his encounter with a ghost. We just have to say it, even if it’s a bit off-topic: this man looks just the same as he did in “The Matrix,” and he’s 50 years old!
