Status: Post-Production
Release Date: June 7, 2024
A day after John Wick: Chapter 4 crossed $250m at the global box office, Lionsgate announced it has set a wide June 7 2024 release date for spin-off Ballerina starring Ana De Armas. —Screen Daily
Director: Len Wiseman
Writers: Shay Hatten and Emerald Fennell
Announcement
Deadline reports:
EXCLUSIVE: The 2x Primetime Emmy nominated and Golden Globe winning Gabriel Byrne has closed a deal, we hear, to star opposite Ana de Armas in the John Wick spinoff Ballerina.
He joins the ever-expanding cast which includes Ian McShane, Keanu Reeves, Anjelica Huston, Lance Reddick, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Norman Reedus.
Producer Basil Iwanyk said: “For decades, Gabriel’s mysterious and enigmatic presence has enriched dozens of films. You can never quite be sure what he’s thinking, and that’s perfect for this world.”
Background Information
Ballerina takes place between the events of 2019’s John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and the newly-released John Wick: Chapter 4. The spinoff film stars the aforementioned De Armas as Rooney, a ballerina on a quest to avenge the death of her family. The role of Rooney was previously portrayed by Unity Phelan in Parabellum.
“Ballerina starts by introducing a character who kind of went through some of the same training as John in the ballet academy of Anjelica Huston[‘s character] that we see in the third movie,” Hatten told Collider. “But then she ends up going to a whole new corner of the world and a new kind of isolated community that really is unlike anything we’ve seen in these previous John Wick movies.” Collider
Hatten also talked about co-writing the script with Emerald Fennell, talking about what Fennell brought to the original script when she signed on.
That was actually during an interim when I wasn’t on it. I wrote the original script, then was rewriting it. And I think it was when Ana [de Armas] came on, Emerald came on and did a pass at it. And then I came back on later and read her draft, and I was like, “It’s great,” because she’s a genius. So it was like she kind of, I think, put a lot of ideas in there that, as is the nature of the thing, some of them stuck and are in the movie, and some of them we kind of developed away from again as it was going into production. But I do think it was really cool to kind of have a writer that I’m such a fan of just come in and put kind of a touch on the character. So I think it probably brought a lot to the movie. Collider
Read the Byrneholics article announcing the film for more information.
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