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Mel Gibson To Star In John Wick Prequel TV Show The Continental
Veteran actor Mel Gibson is the first to join the cast of the John Wick spinoff show, The Continental. Gibson has had a long and distinguished career in Hollywood, staring off in George Miller's Mad Max films, as well as Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon series. The actor has also established himself as a directing powerhouse, winning the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture for 1995's Braveheart and later making the mega-hit religious film, The Passion of The Christ in 2004. After a sabbatical due to personal issues, Gibson returned to the big screen in 2010, working steadily on a number of projects, including Edge of Darkness, Get The Gringo, The Expendables 3, Daddy's Home 2, and Fatman, as well as his most recent directorial effort, Hacksaw Ridge, with Andrew Garfield.
The Continental is a John Wick spinoff show, announced earlier this year, which will consist of three 90-minute episodes that track the origin of the famed assassin's hotel, which is run and controlled by The High Table and strictly forbids violence on the hotel grounds, acting as a safehouse for assassin members, such as John Wick, who violated those rules in John Wick: Chapter 2. The Continental will be a prequel series, focusing on a younger version of Ian McShane's Winston Scott, who takes control of the hotel in the late '70s. No names have been announced as to who will play the young Winston, although McShane may provide voiceover for the series.
Deadline is reporting that Gibson will join the three-night Lionsgate/Starz limited event series as a character known as Cormac. No other details were provided, but Gibson is the first to join the series thus far. Keanu Reeves is not expected to appear in The Continental, but may join on as an executive producer, along with John Wick creator Derek Kolsted. Greg Coolidge and Kirk Ward will serve as the writers and showrunners for the limited event series with Thunder Road Pictures’ Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, Shawn Simmons, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese on executive producer duties. Book of Eli director Albert Hughes will direct two of the three episodes of the prequel series.
The fourth chapter of the John Wick franchise is set to begin filming soon with Reeves returning to the titular role and director Chad Stahelski returning to direct. The franchise has been a huge hit for Lionsgate, doubling profits with each new entry with a franchise haul of $584 million at the global box office. A fifth film in the franchise is also expected, although the original plan to film both Chapter 4 and 5 back-to-back was scrapped due to Covid and will now film separately.
With the John Wick franchise being such a massive hit for Lionsgate and serving as their version of a superhero franchise at this point, it makes perfect sense to spin off the series into TV/streaming. The mythology established in John Wick is an interesting and expansive one, which opens the door to explore a multitude of avenues for characters, locations and more of the underworld aspects that make the series so compelling (as well as all the well-orchestrated violence). The Continental should serve as a great bookend to the main films, expanding the world that John Wick has created. The casting of the show will also be a major selling point for the event series, and Gibson is a great start, as he's got the grit, the look, the voice and the physicality to match the suited and booted assassin's guild characters that audiences have come to love and fear at the same time.
