We all have to face our mortality eventually, but if you’re a member of the John Wick stunt team, you’ve probably already had to do it close to a dozen times. In John Wick: Chapter 4, which could be the final film in the franchise, the kills come fast and furious.
There is a great aside tucked into a new story detailing how the filmmakers pulled off the film’s climactic set piece on the steps leading to the Sacré-Coeur Basilica: Reeves gave members of the stunt team shirts emblazoned with the number of times they died on film (some racked up 20-plus deaths). Reeves is known for showering the series’ stuntmen with gifts to honor their efforts in making the visceral, punishing sequences that make the films’ action sequences sing. When filming on Chapter 4 wrapped, he gave them all engraved Rolex Submariners.
According to Screen Rant, the fourth Wick film is not the most violent on a per minute basis–that honor goes to Chapter 2, which features a kill roughly every 57 seconds–but it does have the highest total kill count, at an estimated 140 fatalities. Thankfully the series’ latest Very Good Boy was not part of the carnage.
The appetite for John Wick’s signature neon-lit nonstop action remains ravenous, as Chapter 4 opened to the franchise’s best box office weekend, earning more than $73 million. Though it was widely believed this would be the final installment, the movie’s success has put the idea of a fifth Wick film firmly back in the realm of possibility, per The Hollywood Reporter.
And until then, there will certainly be some top shelf kills in the first Wick spinoff film, Ballerina, which stars Ana de Armas and will feature Reeves reprising his role. Maybe de Armas can one-up Reeves with embroidered jean jackets featuring the crew’s various death totals.