The hard-hitting John Wick is one of the strongest actioners played by Keanu Reeves and he has absolutely bedazzled us over the past decade in all the franchises. The story of ‘John Wick’ (2014) revolves around a legendary assassin named John Wick (Keanu Reeves), who retires from his violent career after marrying the love of his life (Bridget Moynahan). But her sudden death leaves John in deep mourning. When sadistic mobster Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen) and his thugs steal John’s prized car and kill the puppy that was a last gift from his wife, John unleashes the remorseless killing machine within and seeks vengeance. Meanwhile, Iosef’s father (Michael Nyqvist), John’s former colleague, puts a huge bounty on John’s head.
Recently screenwriter of ‘John Wick’, Derek Kolstad revealed that the character of John Wick was planned as a much older man while writing the script and also it was initially titled ‘Scorn’. Even the franchise’s producer, Basil Iwanyk has also mentioned in his new book named, ‘They Shouldn’t Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Ass-Kicking Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu and The New Age Of Action’ that John Wick was actually a 75-year-old man in the script.
According to Entertainment Weekly, in the book it’s written, “One of my best friends is Charlie Ferraro at UTA, who sent me this script from Derek Kolstad called ‘Scorn’, The lead was a 75-year-old man, 25 years after being retired. It was the fun of watching Clint Eastwood kick ass. I thought, ‘Okay, there’s probably one or two names you could do this with: Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford.”
According to Kolstad, Reeves loved the script so much that he overhauled the character and made it his own. Kolstad said, “I spent two months at Keanu’s house on the weekends working on the script. When I first went and met with Keanu and walked into his house and as he rounded the corner to say hello to me, it’s a nice house, it’s not ostentatious for a guy who’s worth, I dunno, billions and I look in his office, I see he has 300 screenplays stacked on his desk, because he reads everything that UTA, WME, William Morris sends out. He reads them all.”
