Keanu Reeves’ return as the titular hero exceeded everyone’s expectations and recorded the highest opening weekend in the R-rated franchise. The fourth installment in the franchise not only stood out in terms of its box office collection but also as the lengthiest film in the franchise, with a runtime of 169 minutes. And the lead character only spoke 380 words in the movie, which is almost three hours long.
While fans may be surprised by the lack of dialogue for the star of the franchise, it certainly isn’t disappointing for the John Wick star, as he earned approximately $39,500 for every single word he said in the film.
Keanu Reeves Received $15 Million For John Wick: Chapter 4
The Wall Street Journal reported that Keanu Reeves cut off half of his dialogues from John Wick: Chapter 4, and his dialogues amounted to only 380 words. One of the screenwriters, Michael Finch, shared that Reeves and the director of the franchise, Chad Stahelski, supervised the hours-long writing session.
Both of them worked with the writers to make sure that story would come out in the best way possible, and it did. Both the director and The Matrix star decide to chop off half of his dialogues, nearly one-third of which consisted of a single word. While that hardly seems to bother fans as the character seems to have become less talkative throughout the four films.
The character seems more focused on bringing down High Table and avenging his pet dog. And it also doesn’t seem to bother Reeves’ paycheck for his performance over the four films in the John Wick franchise. The actor has received $15 million for John Wick: Chapter 4.
The payment is much higher compared to the previous three films in the franchise. The Constantine star made $1 million and $2 million in the 2014 film John Wick. He made $2 million to $2.5 million for its sequel and threequel, released in 2017 and 2019, respectively.
John Wick’s Actions Speak For Him
Although Keanu Reeves is not interested in speaking too much on-screen as John Wick, the 58-year-old actor does not follow the same for his action scenes. Despite having only 380 words in John Wick 4, the film and the Speed star have fulfilled the lack of words with John Wick’s action sequences in the movie.
Reeves prefers doing his own stunts as long as he can, and he wanted to make sure that he did the car stunt himself in Chapter 4 as well. The actor called it the “most challenging” stunt as he shared that he trained for nearly three months for that one stunt. He shared that he wanted to bring “the muscle cars” back in the film, and they did every possible thing they could do with it.
Although he does not have as many words as the initial films in the franchise, John Wick 4 has the most action scenes of any of the previous films under the franchise. He even claimed that it had been the “hardest physical role” of his career, and he and the director make sure that the final product is the best version of itself.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is playing in theatres now.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
