There could still be a John Wick 5

The powers-that-be were pretty adamant that the current John Wick would be the very last one. Never say never.

You can’t keep John Wick down.

The fourth instalment of the Keanu Reeves action franchise has been storming the global box office, taking in $US141 million on its opening weekend.

In Australia, it debuted with a franchise best of $A6.9 million, comparable to movies including Mission Impossible: Fallout and Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s the second highest opening weekend this year after Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

John Wick 4 has already overtaken the global lifetime gross of the first movie ($US86 million), is close to that of the second ($US171 million) and is on track to beat the third ($US371 million).

Far from being a brand of diminishing returns, each John Wick movie has done better than the last. Critically, its Rotten Tomatoes score has also continued to rise, from 86 per cent on the original flick to John Wick 4’s 94 per cent.

The fourth film’s roaring commercial success makes the prospect of a fifth John Wick instalment almost an inevitability, which is a 180-degree turnaround. Director Chad Stahelski and Reeves have previously said John Wick 4 was very likely the last one.

But fans will be excited to hear that Joe Drake, the chair of Lionsgate, the studio behind John Wick, flagged there could be more.

SPOILER WARNING FOR JOHN WICK 4

John Wick has become one of Keanu Reeves’ most iconic roles. Picture: Lionsgate

He told The Hollywood Reporter, “There’s a will and there’s an openness. And you could certainly interpret that ending in different ways. We’re all going to take a tiny rest here and then scratch at ideas about whether there’s a credible way to get into five. But there’s no guarantee.”

Drake is referencing the ending of the John Wick film, where the title character seemingly died at the end of the battle royale against the movie’s villain, played by Bill Skarsgard. But the “death” scene is filmed from afar in a wide shot.

There is later a scene in which Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne’s characters visit a gravesite marked with John Wick’s headstone, and the epithet he earlier in the film said he wanted.

However, as we all know, in the world of movie magic, dead doesn’t always mean dead.

At least when the ending was conceived, it was designed to be a straightforward one. The original plan was to shoot a fourth and fifth film back-to-back but that didn’t happen once they had settled on the death at the end of four.

Drake said Reeves and Stahelski are careful that they don’t annoy fans with a fake-out, and that any continuation would have to be earned.

John Wick could come back for a fifth instalment. Picture: Lionsgate

“Keanu and Chad, rightly so, are very protective about never screwing with the audience. So we certainly have our work cut out for us. Keanu is so beloved and that character is so beloved. That’s not lost on him,” Drake said.

Even if a fifth movie ultimately doesn’t happen, and the character’s journey is really at an end, Reeves will still reprise the role in spin-offs.

He’s slated to feature in Ballerina, a spin-off built around a character played by Ana de Armas. But the timeline of Ballerina is set in between John Wick 3 and John Wick 4, so it’s essentially a prequel appearance.

In an earlier interview with THR, Stahelski hinted that the door wasn’t completely shut.

“Keanu and I will take a long trip to Tokyo, we’ll sit in the Imperial Hotel Scotch Bar and go, ‘What do you think?’. We’ll have a couple of 20-year-old whiskies and write some ideas on napkins. If those ideas stick, maybe we’ll make a movie.”

John Wick 4 is in cinemas now