Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas will face off in ‘Ballerina’, the spin-off of ‘John Wick’

The CinemaCon 2024, which is currently taking place in Las Vegas, brings new information about ‘Ballerina’, the ‘John Wick’ spin-off starring Ana de Armas, a movie in which Keanu Reeves also plays the most brutal and elegant assassin in cinema. And most importantly, the first trailer of the movie, shown behind closed doors, suggests that John Wick will not be a mere cameo, but will be a secondary character with relevance to the plot.

Confirmed: John Wick won’t just be a cameo in ‘Ballerina,’ the spin-off starring Ana de Armas

As reported by The Wrap, the first trailer for ‘Ballerina’ shown at CinemaCon 2024 confirms that Ana de Armas and Keanu Reeves’ characters will meet. This has profound implications for the movie’s plot, as one of the most recurring questions about the movie was whether John Wick would appear in it.

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The trailer confirms that he will appear, and the fact that Keanu Reeves spent a week on the set of the movie also tacitly confirms that John Wick’s appearance will not be a simple “hello and goodbye”, but that he will at least participate in some action scene. The return of Keanu Reeves’ character after the fourth installment, which will be released in 2023, is, therefore, one of the great attractions of ‘Ballerina’.

What is Ballerina about and when does it premiere?

‘Ballerina’ stars Ana de Armas as Rooney, a ballet dancer on a quest for revenge and the hunt for the killers of her family. Throughout the movie, she seeks the protection of Winston (Ian McShane) and Charon (the late Lance Reddick) of New York’s Continental Hotel. This character has already appeared in ‘John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum’ (2019). She was played by Unity Phelan, and was the dancer who trained under the strict orders of The Director (Anjelica Huston).

The plot of ‘Ballerina’ is set between the third and fourth ‘John Wick’ films, when the assassin played by Keanu Reeves is still recovering from the apparent betrayal by Winston at the end of the third installment. This is a point in the saga where there are some loose ends, and ‘Ballerina’ aims to fill those gaps with an all-new story that complements the cinematic universe of assassins and secret societies created by Chad Stahelski.

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The original release date for ‘Ballerina’ was June 7, 2024, but it has been pushed back another year and will be released on June 6, 2025. The director is Len Wiseman, known for directing the first two films in the ‘Underworld’ saga and ‘Die Hard 4.0′ with Bruce Willis. The screenplay was written by Shay Hatten, Michael Finch and Emerald Fennell.

As for the future of the franchise, ‘John Wick 5′ is on the horizon, despite the character’s ambiguous ending at the end of the fourth installment.