For those who have not yet seen the John Wick sequel, the film ended on a massive cliffhanger that left many assuming a sequel would be on the way.  Earlier today, John Wick 2 director, Chad Stahelski, confirmed that writing for the third installment is already underway.  Furthermore, he offered some details on when we might expect filming to commence and his plans for the direction of John Wick 3.

Yeah — we’re currently in the middle of writing it right now. It’s more of a how fast can we get our shit together. But I would assume that if not by the end of this year, the beginning of next year.

Again, that Stahelski is already “in the middle” of writing is no huge surprise.  Previous word was that work began on John Wick 3 as early as October of last year.  What is surprising is the prospective imminence of filming.  At least with questions about who exactly will be directing the Wick’s next outing.  David Leitch, who co-directed the original film with Stahelski, left the series in order to direct Atomic Blonde and he’s now attached to Deadpool 2.

Although he claims to be “super involved” with John Wick 3, Stahelski is slated to direct the Highlander reboot.  On the prospect of coming back for the next film, “Currently I’m acting as prep director. Hopefully everything will work out time wise. Of course — I would love to…”

However, the lack of a permanent director does not mean that the film is without direction.

We want, not so much to go bigger on the third one, but to show you more of the intricacies of the world… I feel like there are all these different subtleties that I skipped over in Number Two, that I’d like to go back to on [chapter three] and show you the inner workings of different parts of New York. So rather than massive set pieces, I’d like to show you cooler and more intricate ones… I think it would be a mistake budget wise and creatively to just go big and blow up a freeway. That’s not our gig. That’s a comic book or a Bond gig. We want to show you cool and intricate details. What are those little details in everyday life? Hopefully – we make people look at garbage collectors and cleaner vans and homeless people a little differently now. We’re very comfortable with where we want [John Wick] to go in the third one and what Keanu wants to do. If you really watch the first and second one, there’s only one place it can go — so I’ll let you sort that out.

Fans can expect the third film to really dive into the John Wick’s backstory in a more direct manner than has been revealed in previous films, which has mostly been through implication until this point.

Yeah, definitely — but it’s about John revealing it. It’s not about you finding a hidden book or a secret map about who John Wick is. Anyone watching can start piecing it together. You know he’s had some serious training. Was it military? Ehh — he kind of looks military. Where’s he from? Well — he speaks all these languages. We’re giving you the pieces and I think it’s always good… Hopefully in five years, you and your buddies will talk about how ‘he’s this or he’s that.’ We’ll give you a couple more pieces and let you stitch it together.

Whoever ends up directing the film has a large task ahead of them. After two strong critical outings, expectations are already lofty for the next installment. -Kevin Bond

Source – Collider

John Wick 3 – Expected to begin filming either late this year or early next year, the film is set to focus much more on John Wick’s backstory than the first two films