Ballerina, slated for release in 2024, will expand the John Wick universe with an all-new story. Between the third and fourth episodes, the story will tackle the revenge plot of an experienced assassin (Ana de Armas), who wants to kill those responsible for the death of her family.
as a dancer join the universe john wickproducer Eric Lee told us in an interview (via Collider):
“Yeah. It’s funny, Ballerina was a long time coming too. Shay Hatten was like an intern for Robert Downey Jr., I had an AGM with him, he was a huge John Wick fan and he Ballerina writes in a vacuum, like a spec script. He gave it to me, I mean five years ago, and I read it and I was like, ‘Okay. He was an assassin , Rooney, it was a female character, but we pulled it out and thought, ‘Let’s rewind this to (the) John Wick universe.
Then we started developing it and making it more Wick. But that was before we shot John Wick 3. There have been iterations along the way, and as we continue to learn more about the universe and create new characters and refine the world of Wick, it will break through Ballerina. So even a year ago when we were working on the script, it was like, ‘Okay, Winston was kind of there, and Charon’s character, and Anjelica Houston, the director’s character’, but it was like, ‘What do we know now? What is the status of The Continental? What is the timeline? How do we break it down? What benchmarks can we use? Ballerina is this ever-evolving film ecosystem. It was a lot of fun working on it.”
It’s clear from the statement that the filmmakers wanted to make sure that ballet dancer would have an established place in the history of john wick and it will not be a story disconnected from the rest. Such an approach to the creation of a spin-off can give hope that the project will succeed and the creators will be killed in revenge.