John Wick Spinoff Ballerina Has Been Delayed A Year, But A Long-Anticipated Remake Is Taking Its Release Date
John Wick looks to have died at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4, but that doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of Keanu Reeves’ assassin character. The actor is part of the Ballerina cast, with this spinoff being set between the third and fourth John Wick movies, and featuring Ana de Armas in the lead role. Until today, Ballerina had been slated on the 2024 movies calendar, but it’s now been delayed a year, and a long-anticipated remake is taking its release date.
As reported by Deadline, Lionsgate has shifted Ballerina from June 7, 2024 to June 6, 2025. This move follows Chad Stahelski, director of all the main John Wick movies, signing a deal to oversee the franchise. He’s now working with Ballerina director Len Wiseman on additional action sequences to, as described by the publication, “amp it up even more than it is,” although tracking is said to already be “hot” on the spinoff. Right now, Ballerina is the only movie in that June 6 slot.
With Ballerina being saved for 2025, Lionsgate will now release The Crow on June 7 instead. This project has been in development since 2008, 14 years after the Brandon Lee-led The Crow was released in theaters. The remake was finally able to get off the ground in April 2022 when Bill Skarsgård was cast as Eric Draven, and filming happened from July-September 2022. Now there’s only four months to go until we see how this new version of The Crow turned out; it opens the same day as M. Night Shyamalan’s next movie, The Watchers.
Based on the same-named comic book series by James O’Barr, The Crow follows Eric and his fiancée Shelly, played in this movie by FKA Twigs, being murdered by criminals. After the former is resurrected, he wastes no time with exacting revenge on those who killed the latter, and that mission sees him traversing the worlds of both the living and dead. Skarsgård and FKA Twigs are joined in The Crow cast by Isabella Wei, Danny Huston, Laura Birn, Sami Bouajila, and Jordan Bolger. Rupert Sanders directed the feature, and Zach Baylin and Will Schneider wrote the script.
The Crow is one of the bigger releases Lionsgate has lined up for later this year, with others including Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Borderlands (which premiered its first trailer today) and Saw XI. As for Ballerina, other familiar John Wick faces who are back for the spinoff are Ian McShane, the late Lance Reddick (this will be his final film appearance) and Anjelica Huston. The newcomer roster includes Gabriel Byrne, Norman Reedus and Catalina Sandino Moreno.
Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more coverage on Ballerina and The Crow. For the John Wick fans out there, the first three movies can be streamed with a Peacock subscription, and Chapter 4 can be accessed with a Starz add-on to a Hulu subscription. Those in the mood to check out 1994’s The Crow can stream it if you’re subscribed to Paramount+.
