To quote Keanu Reeves in John Wick, “I’m thinking I’m back.”
At CinemaCon, Lionsgate announced three projects within the John Wick universe: John Wick 5, an animated prequel, and a Caine spinoff starring Donnie Yen.
The big news is John Wick: Chapter 5, with Reeves returning to star and Chad Stahelski back to direct. Stahelski will produce alongside Thunder Road producers Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee.
2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4 was the franchise’s biggest hit, grossing over $440 million worldwide. At the end of Chapter 4, John dies from the injuries suffered in the duel at Sacré-Cœur. Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) then visit John’s tombstone, which is located next to the one for his wife, Helen.
“Keanu, Chad, Basil, and Erica would not return unless they had something truly phenomenal and fresh to say with these characters and this world,” Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair Adam Fogelson said about John Wick: Chapter 5 via THR. “We can’t wait for audiences to see where the journey takes us next.”
As previously announced, Yen will reprise his role as Caine in a standalone film. However, Yen has been tapped to direct the Lionsgate film, which has been billed as a Hong Kong-style action thriller. Mattson Tomlin will pen the Caine screenplay. Robert Askins wrote the first draft. Stahelski, Iwanyk, and Lee will also produce.
Caine is a gifted blind assassin and an old friend of Wick who first appears in John Wick: Chapter 4. The movie will pick up after the events of Chapter 4, with Caine no longer working for the High Table. Production begins in Hong Kong later this year.
Finally, Reeves will voice the titular assassin in a John Wick animated movie. Shannon Tindle will direct from a screenplay by Vanessa Taylor. Tindle recently wrote and co-directed Netflix’s Ultraman: Rising. Taylor is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter best known for penning The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro.
The animated movie will be a prequel to John Wick, going back in time to the night when John completed the Impossible Task, the mission that freed him from the High Table so he could start a life with Helen.
Reeves, Stahelski, Iwanyk, and Erica Lee will produce the animated prequel.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.