The popular Keanu Reeves movie is the only R-rated action movie to be approved by Beijing censors without censorship changes, and it opens in China two years after it was released in theaters in the United States.
The latest blockbuster film in Keanu Reeves’ wonderfully violent action series, John Wick: Chapter 4, is making an unexpected late-game run at the Chinese theater box office.
Permission has been obtained for the Lionsgate blockbuster to open in theaters in the nation on March 14, two years after its first global release in 2023. According to people close to the project, the R-rated film was not altered in any way to satisfy Beijing’s strict film authorities.
In China, it is uncommon for violent R-rated content to be released from abroad. None of the earlier John Wick films have been able to find a home on Chinese movie screens. Deadpool & Wolverine, a film from Disney and Marvel, debuted in Chinese theaters last year, but only after some adjustments were made to the film’s explicit dialogue and violence (censors blocked the first Deadpool, and the second Deadpool was substantially trimmed and released late as a PG-13 version).
The on-again, off-again boundary pushing Huahua Media, a Chinese distributor, is in charge of John Wick 4’s local promotion and distribution. At well over $440 million worldwide, including $187 million domestically, John Wick 4 is already the highest-grossing game in the Lionsgate franchise.
The sequel, which was produced by Thunder Road Films and 87Eleven Entertainment, was marketed as the most likely last installment in the John Wick story, which started in 2014 with the unrepentantly B-movie-style chaos of the first John Wick. The plot started with a straightforward idea: After masked intruders kill his dog, a former hitman becomes entangled in a life of unrelenting violence. Since then, however, the narrative has developed into a continuous drama about the Continental, an assassination underground universe.
John Wick 4, which was directed by Chad Stahelski, is rife with the typical chaos, bloodshed, balletic physicality, and macabre comedy that have come to characterize the action genre. The late Lance Reddick, who passed away in 2023, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgard, Laurence Fishburne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Rina Sawayama, and Ian McShane are also in the cast. Ballerina, a spinoff movie that takes place before to the events of Chapter 4 and stars Ana de Armas with a cameo from Reeves, will be released in North America on June 6.