John Wick 4 Director Teases New Dog’s Big Role In Keanu Reeves Sequel
John Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski breaks down the process of working with dogs in the action franchise.
As reported by Screenrant, the Keanu Reeves-led franchise has a long history with dogs, starting with the retired hitman’s puppy – a gift from his beloved late wife – being killed by a mobster and his crew in 2014’s John Wick.
That tragic death kicked off John’s return to his life as an assassin, which is still going strong three films down the line.
At the end of John Wick, the hitman adopted a new dog, which was joined by several more canines in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum when Halle Berry’s character and her highly trained and vicious pups were introduced.
While speaking with Collider, Stahelski explained the dogs’ ongoing involvement in the franchise, offering some behind the scenes insight as to how a new dog in the franchise and her fellow four-legged actors are trained.
The John Wick franchise has come to be known for bombastic action sequences, with John Wick: Chapter 4 reportedly going further than the films have ever gone before.
Luckily for those hoping to see more dogs in the next installment, Stahelski’s comments imply that the animals will be plenty involved with the action given the efforts the crew has made to incorporate the canines.
See what the director had to say below:
“Well, the [new] character of the dog is a her, but we had, let’s see, three females and two male dogs to comp all one dog together, depending on what the stunt, or the gag, or the acting bit was. This time we learned a lot from last time, but we wanted a little bit more out of this one in specialty stuff. We had the dog, I think it was just over five months, to work with cast and on stunts. It’s just when you’re bringing in the stunt teams, and we have different stunt teams on this one because it’s so much bigger, the dog is just like friends. You have to get to know your friends. So in order for the dog to be very playful, and safe, and have the confidence just like a human would, they have to spend time with each individual stunt guy. So we had to rotate every hour. One of our 10 main stunt team guys would go and play. That was his job. He had to go play with the dogs, and get tackled by the dogs, and play Frisbee with the dog. So you get acclimated to our canine friend and then that’s how we started working it.”
