Zack Sharf Keanu Reeves has turned John Wick into an iconic action here over the last seven years, but it turns out the role was originally written for an actor more in the vein of Harrison Ford or Clint Eastwood.
Franchise producer Basil Iwanyk confirms in the new book “They Shouldn’t Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu, and the New Age of Action” that the title character was a 75-year-old man in the original script.“One of my best friends is Charlie Ferraro at UTA, who sent me this script from Derek Kolstad called ‘Scorn,'” says Iwanyk in the book (via Entertainment Weekly). “The lead was a 75-year-old man, 25 years after being retired.
It was the fun of watching Clint Eastwood kick ass. I thought, Okay, there’s probably one or two names you could do this with: Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford.” “My other best friend in the world, this guy Jimmy Darmody, is an agent at CAA, who at the time represented Keanu,” continues Iwanyk. “And he said, ‘Do you have any action movies for Keanu Reeves?’ I remember thinking to myself, Keanu is one of the great action stars of the last 25 years — what happened to him?
What’s he been doing? And he was directing his movie, ‘Man of Tai Chi,’ and doing ’47 Ronin.’ We give him the script, we tell him, ‘Clearly, you’re not 75.'”‘Reeves says in the book that he immediately knew “John Wick” would “such a great collaboration,” adding, “We all agreed on the potential of the project.
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