Starz’s The Continental television series will take place 40 years before the events of the first feature film John Wick and will focus on Winson, the owner of the famous hotel for assassins.

And The Continental has been in development for several years, its format is surprisingly very similar to British productions. Kevin Beggs, President of Lionsgate Television, comes back to this one as well as the content: “What we explore in this series is young Winston and how he and his team ended up in this hotel that we first meet in the film franchise 40 years later. It is the arena, the canvas of the series. I won’t say more about the script, except that we approached this first season in the form of three events, which will be around 90 minutes long. You can think of it as a limited series or a limited event series.”

“We received many proposals, then the creative team of an obscure little show called Wayne, broadcast on YouTube, came to offer us their version.“, Added Kevin Beggs. “We were blown away because she solved a bunch of problems and was super hot. She was talking about a crumbling New York in the 1970s, with a garbage strike that piled garbage bags up to the third floor of most brownstones, with the Mafia interfering in the business, which is why in The Sopranos he’s in the business of sanitation, and other things that are really real and that provide an interesting backdrop to explore the origins of The Continental, which is known in the movie franchise as the hotel of the assassins, in which you cannot kill anyone within the hotel grounds, but of course if you step outside you are easy prey, and this is used to great effect in many movie plots. It’s Winston, played by Ian McShane (in the movies), who’s running it all.”

Keanu Reeves dans The Continental ?

Initially, when The Continental was announced by Starz in 2018, the executives of the American channel said that “you can expect to see Keanu Reeves at some point in the series”. Following several internal changes, CEO Jeff Hirsch declined to confirm whether Reeves was appearing or not. Deadline therefore asked Kevin Beggs to clarify the actor’s involvement: “He is in talks to be an executive producer. Because we are far back in time, far before John Wick and even before young John Wick, this character does not find his way into the universe. We are in the universe of John Wick, but it is very far in time. Think about the Game of Thrones prequels before you knew any of the characters, but you did know the world. But Keanu and Chad have read every version and have been enthusiastic supporters of expanding this universe in significant ways. So I never rule anything out, but at this point he’s pretty busy making his films, which are very important to us.”

John Wick from Lionsgate is part of a 360-degree strategy: “It’s such a successful franchise, it’s about to have its fourth and fifth installments as a movie. That’s why the movie starring Keanu Reeves – which is amazing in everything it does but particularly convincing as John Wick in our minds – begs to be adapted for television. Just like the Marvel Universe and the DC Universe from a TV standpoint are incredible opportunities, and this is our superhero franchise in the family.“

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