Good news for fans of Keanu Reeves' antihero

Considering the success of the 'John Wick' franchise to date - including the recently-released fourth installment - you might expect that the people behind it will keep churning them out ad infinitum.

That is not necessarily the case, however, with the Keanu Reeves films, according to director Chad Stahelski, who has said that there would need to be a good reason and a good storyline for the series to continue. He may well have found the former: in the two weeks that the film was released, it has already taken over $245 million at the global box office.

Joe Drake of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group recently said that "there’s a will and there’s an openness" to making a fifth 'John Wick' film if they could come up with a "credible" way to do so.

Director Stahelski has now told The Hollywood Reporter on their 'Behind the Screen' podcast: "“It’s very flattering for them to come back and, you know, say ‘We want more’ and it’s not just a cash grab," he said. "It’s legitimately the audience wants more."

He added: "I think we all need that little bit of time to go, ‘Whew. Let’s see what’s next.’ … If Keanu and I, a few months from now sit down at a whiskey bar in Japan again and go, ‘Yep, we’ll never do another one of those,’ and then all of a sudden go, ‘Yeah, but I got an idea,’ we’re open to it."

In the same podcast, Stahelski also elaborated on the scene from 'John Wick 4' that takes place on the famous steps of the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Paris. "We were [scouting] at the top of Sacré Cœur, the sun had just set. We looked down the stairs from the top, and went, ‘Oh, somebody’s going down this'," he said. "Literally, we’re like, not only is he going down this, we’re gonna have John Wick fight his way up. We’re gonna throw him back down and then we’re gonna have him and Donnie [Yen’s] character Caine do the Butch and Sundance thing and get to the top… We’ll do the music and we’ll make it like a Western. We’ll have him fight all the way to the top and bond just so we can see who kills each other at the top."