‘John Wick’ Director Believes There Could Be A Stunts Oscar By 2025

For several years, John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski has been one of the leading voices behind the call for the Oscars to add stunts to their awards categories. According to the filmmaker, active conversations are underway, and we could only be a year or two from it becoming a reality.

“We’re moving forward, especially in the last few months,” he confirmed exclusively. “What we found out after years of talk was that no one had had a discussion about it. No one from the Academy has ever sat down with a contingent from the stunt community and vice versa and talked. The governors, the presidents, and the people running the show are all 100 percent positive. There hasn’t been a single individual we’ve encountered who doesn’t think stunts should be in the Oscars.”

When asked if he thought that could be as soon as the 2025 or 2026 ceremonies, Stahelski said he “wouldn’t be surprised.”

“I think very soon, if not this upcoming awards, then by the next one, you’ll see a real inclusion of stunts into the Academy Awards. We all know how big entities work, but the positivity and the fact that it’s a hot topic on both sides, we’ll hopefully see it happening much sooner, to be honest with you.”

While Academy members actively entertain the idea, the specifics still need to be ironed out.

“The big questions are how to do it and who gets it? How does the process go for nominees? Stunts involve so many departments,” the director explained. “Should the Oscar go to the individual performing the stunt? Can you go for the man or woman that conceives or choreographs the action? Should he go to the stunt person who pulls it off? Should it go to the directors or the editors? That has never been addressed.

“After that, what’s the award? Is it the Best Stunt, Best High Fall, Best Action Sequence, or something else? These are all the hard conversations that have to happen and what we’re trying to get across. Now it’s not a question of whether or not stunts deserve an Oscar, but who actually gets the statue.”

He added, “You can’t just go in, and then you throw the trophy on the stage for the person that does the best high fall. There are consequences to this that will ripple through the industry.”

The Academy declined to offer a formal statement in response to the specifics of Stahelski’s comments; however, there has been an increasing representation of the stunts community within the organization. There are currently almost 100 members in the Production and Technology Branch.

While a branch specifically for stunt coordinators doesn’t currently exist, in line with the director’s attestations, the Academy does have a process to propose branch status through the Academy’s Membership Committee. The body continues to regularly assess what disciplines could or should be included in future awards.

“It’s a case of doing it as schedules allow, one at a time, presenting the case and trying to work through everyone’s opinion on this,” Stahelski continued. “They understand and want us in. For the first time, we’re seeing real movement, and it’s coming, luckily, from both sides.”

John Wick: Chapter 4, which recently landed on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and Digital, has not only been one of the biggest box office hits of the year, but it also saw the franchise pass the hallowed $1 billion mark globally. The fourth entry in the series alone has grossed $432.4 million worldwide.

Initially due to have been released in 2021, the director and his team knew they wanted the movie to be theatrical.

“The studio always does a good job of always asking, in a very proactive and omniscient way, what we want to do, and we made it very clear,” Stahelski explained. “I don’t mean it in an elitist way, but Keanu is the most adamant person about theatrical experience. We both love going to movie theaters, that’s a magical home for us, and it’s where many of us grew up. That’s where we get our inspiration or ideas, seeing movies with others and experiencing that epic Lawrence of Arabia vibe on the big screen.”

He continued, “We shot on anamorphic lenses, we had Tyler Bates orchestrate 90 percent of the score, we spent three times as many hours in Digital Intermediate this time to get the colors right, and we did an extra two layers of sound mixing because we wanted this to be theatrical. We’ve been insistent on that from the beginning, and the studio never doubted us. Even Joe Drake, Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group chair, said, ‘This is going into theaters. We’re picking a weekend, and you’ve got to be ready.’

“As soon as we knew we weren’t going to make the 2021 date because of the pandemic and a late start, they were like, ‘Okay, let’s find the weekend.’ They literally just nailed the date and said, ‘You’ve got the extra time. Make it count.’ They were totally behind us.”

It paid off.

Despite the events of John Wick: Chapter 4 providing what appeared to be a rather definite bookend to the titular character’s journey, during a recent earnings call, Drake hinted that might not be the case after all.

“What is official is that, as you know, Ballerina is the first spinoff that comes out next year, ” he stated. “We’re in development on three others, including (John Wick) 5 and including television series, The Continental, (which) will be airing soon. And so, we’re building out the world and when that five movie comes, (it) will be organically grown out of how we’re starting to tell those stories. But you can rely on a regular cadence of John Wick.”

Stahelski is keen to explore numerous creative options, including anime.

“We’re really interested, and I think this world would live very well there,” the filmmaker explained. “There has also been a lot of interest expressed to fill in all the gaps and all the sub-characters that we have via a TV show, and that’s exciting to us. This has always been John Wick‘s perspective, but there is so much more to see. What’s the Bowery King’s world or Caine, Koji, or Akira’s world? How can we do the cool anthology or TV series of that? That’s what everybody’s thinking about now. It’s not as John Wick-centric but more about how do we wind the character into the time gaps that we could fill in.

“We’re trying to look at it as that right now and if that will generate some ideas about where we can put another future. You’ll hear no complaints from us. We’re not bored. We don’t think we’re too old. We know there’s more to do, but we can handle it and still push the action. It sounds weird, but we still have ideas we didn’t use. This one just felt right. It felt like the story fit. We had an answer to the question, ‘Why should you go to see it.’ We don’t have that answer right now when we ask, ‘Why make a John Wick 5?’ I promise you that if we come up with it, we’ll be the first to sign on to it.”

With the Hollywood writer’s strike showing no signs of ending and the prospect of more unions joining the fight for better deals, how does that impact any of the pending Wick projects? Stahelski is philosophical about the whole thing.

“There are two ways for me to look at it; One is as Chad as a human being, and the other is as Chad as a director. There’s always going to be an evolution of work and management, and we should always strive to evolve,” he enthused. “There are going to be concessions and agreements made, but it just sucks that it takes the time it does. However, if that’s the process, then that’s the process. I’m all for everyone getting better and more, provided that it’s an equal thing and maybe all have to work harder. I won’t get into the bureaucracy of it all, but I’m behind everybody getting what they deserve.

“As Chad, the director, we just came off a surprisingly successful project; we hit our $1 billion franchise mark, I had meetings ready to go, and then it all stopped. I’m using this time to meet a ton of cast I wouldn’t usually have time to meet. I’ve read three more books of reference that I needed to read, and I’ve got at least ten percent farther into two of the conceptual ideas I’m working on so that when the strike is over, I can go to my writers. I’m going to do more scouting in the next two months than you’ve ever seen so that I can sit with my writing team and start going, ‘I’ve been there.'”

He concluded, “This allows us to do things in a different order. In the last 100 years of filmmaking, nothing stopped us before, not even war. We’re going to make movies, and now it’s our generation’s turn to figure out how the f**k we will do it now.”