Forget 'Reacher,' Keanu Reeves’ Best John Wick Sequel Is Officially the King of Prime Video

What do you do when you lose access to one of the action genre’s biggest stars? You replace them with Keanu Reeves, of course. This is exactly what Netflix has done, according to recent reports, as the John Wick icon takes over from Reacher‘s Alan Ritchson in Netflix’s upcoming action thriller, Maelstrom. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, the film is sure to be a big blockbuster hit for the streamer, as Reeves takes on the role of “a Federal Marshall tasked with guarding the fiancée of an arms dealer who’s seeking witness protection as she preps to testify against him.”

But this is no normal mission for Reeves’ Federal Marshall, as the events of this tense actioner take place across one night and in the midst of a terrifying hurricane. But this should be light work for a man that has been part of some of the most brutal action sequences of this century. His longest mission as the iconic John Wick, and therefore the toughest, was in John Wick: Chapter 4, which clocked in at a whopping 169 minutes (2 hours and 49 minutes) including credits.

But this length clearly paid off financially, with Chapter 4 also becoming the highest-grossing movie in the franchise. Against a reported production budget of $100 million, the film returned a global haul of $447 million, becoming the 16th highest-grossing 2023 title worldwide in the process. Collider’s Ross Bonaime was a fan, calling it “a goofy, ridiculous, three hours of fun that manages to not overstay its welcome” in his official review. Three years later, the film is a hit again. At the time of writing, John Wick: Chapter 4 is one of the ten most-watched movies on Prime Video in the U.S.

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you
handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive
the trilogy, and probably headline it.

You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t
escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are
so careful never to be the reason you start.

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who
  honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one
  against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and
  then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You’d be the one carrying grief through three sequels
  and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn’t call you dangerous. They’d say your name quietly and let that do the
  work.

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about:
the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and
you’d drive through a building for any one of them.

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject,
  because loyalty scales and plot doesn’t have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you
  defend it past the point of reason.
• You’d thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve,
  an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself
anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how
to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the
  rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that’s left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an
  administrative error.
• You’d thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure.
  The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best
equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the
end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned,
  bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn’t make you noble, it makes you sarcastic,
  and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You’d thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation,
  and you’ve never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn’t want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

Keanu Reeves Featured in One of the Year’s Biggest Box Office Hits

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

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• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

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• Image via Lionsgate

• Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Image via Lionsgate

Reeves is never far from a box office smash. Just like John Wick: Chapter 4, the actor was part of a theatrical hit once again earlier this year, although not in physical form. Reeves reprised the role of Duke Caboom in Pixar’s Toy Story 5, which followed in the footsteps of previous franchise entries and earned more than a billion dollars at the box office. Reeves will return to a big-budget animated franchise on March 19, 2027, as part of director Jeff Fowler‘s Sonic the Hedgehog 4.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is one of the ten most-watched movies on Prime Video in the U.S. Stay tuned to Collider for more.

John Wick: Chapter 4