Chad Stahelski may be getting ready to start directing John Wick 4, but that hasn’t stopped him from piling on one future project after another. Well, you can add one more, and this one won’t stretch too far away from the world of assassins. In fact, the film he’s making is an adaptation of Shibumi, which actually got referenced right out in the open in the first John Wick movie.
Shibumi is the classic novel from author Trevanian (the pen name of film critic Rodney William Whitaker), centering on highly skilled assassin Nicholaï Hel and his struggles against the “Mother Company”, a conspiracy of energy companies that secretly control much of the Western world. Hel was born to a Russian mother and raised partly by a Japanese general, learning the concept of shibumi or simple, unobtrusive beauty in many different subjects. He’s also skilled in the territorial game Go, which adds to his abilities as a killer.
Stahelski is producing Shibumi with an eye towards directing it sometime in the future. Good luck with that. Right now he’s got a Highlander reboot, a Ghosts of Tsushima movie, an action flick titled Classified, not to mention the pilot episode of John Wick spinoff The Continental.
So Stahelski is a busy guy, but he might make extra time for this one. The book is said to have been a favorite of his for a long time, and is actually seen in John Wick as an airport security guard is reading it as he lets John pass by. Maybe they were both fans? [Deadline]
