Lionsgate just bought a script they’re hoping will serve as a new chapter in the John Wick cinematic universe.
The script is called Ballerina and it’s described by The Hollywood Reporter as “in the vein of La Femme Nikita, the 1990 female-centric assassin movie that helped launch the career of filmmaker Luc Besson, but with a more pulpy, hyper-stylized bent a la Quentin Tarantino or Matthew Vaughn.”
Shay Hatten wrote the script, but not specifically for the John Wick universe. However, it seems when the script hit the open market, Lionsgate thought the premise—“a young woman raised as an assassin who must hunt down the other assassins that murdered her family”—could easily be tweaked to be set in Wick’s universe. So the company bought it.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of a Wick spinoff. Outside of the main films, two of which are out with a third currently being written, a television show is also in development tentatively called The Continental, after the hotels in the Wick universe that are safe havens for a vast underworld of assassins.
Part of the reason the first John Wick was such a hit was it’s not just a straight forward action movie. It flirted with this deep, fascinating world where assassins live an elevated, international, life of mystery. The second film, John Wick Chapter 2, expanded on that and the third, Chapter 3, would likely add more. And if Ballerina is set in that world, but also stands on its own, all the better. Wick is just one assassin in a world of them.