As the John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum, the series has also begun bringing aboard as many renowned stars in the martial arts movie world with each new chapter.
Parabellum saw the addition of Mark Dacascos, Tiger Chen, Yayan Ruhian, and Cecep Arif Rahman as fellow assassins pursuing John. The John Wick: Chapter 4 is keeping that trend going with Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanada, Scott Adkins, and Marko Zaror on board. Right now, how they'll fit into the story isn't fully known, though Yen's character is said to be a friend of John's, while Zaror is reportedly one of the main assassins in pursuit of him.
While John Wick: Chapter 5 was originally intended to film back-to-back with its predecessor, the COVID-19 pandemic led to John Wick: Chapter 4's production being delayed, with the sequel now moving ahead as a singular production. Still, with the gimmick the series has set up in bringing several big martial arts stars into each new installment, it should keep that tradition going for the remainder of the series. Here are some action stars that the John Wick franchise should bring in.
Michael Jai White
First arriving on the radar in the 1997 superhero movie Mortal Kombat: Legacy. As both heroes and villains alike, White is an always commanding on-screen presence, one with the agility of a man half his size in his action scenes, and having him as a High Table enforcer or rival assassin would give John Wick give a challenge to overcome.
Jean-Claude Van Damme
The Muscles for Brussels has had quite a career, to say the least, and now as an elder statesman of action movies, Jean-Claude Van Damme's trademark split and poker-faced persona would fit in well in the John Wick universe. First breaking through in 1988's Bloodsport, Van Damme's martial arts ability made him a staple of '80s and '90s action movies from Kickboxer to Timecop. As the landscape shifted in later years, Van Damme revamped himself into the persona of a grizzled tough guy who has been around the block and been through a lot, particularly in his team-ups with Scott Adkins and his return to the Universal Soldier franchise with Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning. Van Damme also relished hamming it up as the villainous Jean-Vilain in The Expendables 2, and that role, in particular, set a great template for what he could bring to John Wick as a shadowy High Table senior who commands from behind-the-scenes but can also give John a run for his money in a head-to-head battle.
Tony Jaa
Back in the early 2000s when it seemed the fight scenes of every action movie were simply knocking off important milestone for Jaa's Hong Kong debut, that set his action movie legacy in stone. By 2019, Jaa was co-anchoring Triple Threat, and he remains as engaging a presence in action movies as they come. The idea of Tony Jaa in John Wick: Chapter 5 would be news of the internet-breaking variety, and one can seriously hope it could come to .
Iko Uwais
After making Snake Eyes, is a no-brainer to the club.
Tak Sakaguchi
Western audiences might not recognize Tak Sakaguchi as readily as other action stars from the East, but his more niche familiarity outside of Japan could be a win-win situation for the John Wick franchise. Sakaguchi left the underground fighting world to make his film debut in the 2000's Versus, often described as Re: Born is one of few assassin action movies to genuinely rival the John Wick series, Sakaguchi's portrayal of Toshiro Kuroda embodying an equal to John Wick if there has ever been one. English-speaking audiences will see Sakaguchi in the Nicolas Cage vehicle Prisoners of the Ghostland, but his talent as a martial artist and skill at portraying stone-faced warriors make him a natural for the John Wick universe.
Jeeja Yanin
As a first-time actress and action star, Jeeja Yanin helped make 2008's Chocolate into the next Ong Bak as an autistic young woman who turns herself into a warrior. Yanin would later be seen in other action films like Raging Phoenix, Tom Yum Goong 2, and Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown. Though she was unfortunately underutilized in Triple Threat (though far less so than in Hard Target 2), Yanin's been a key player of some of Thailand's most memorable action movies, with Chocolate especially showing her strengths as Thailand's answer to Gunpowder Milkshake's Michelle Yeoh, and in a first time outing that quite clearly involved lots of pain. Parabellum already had a female friend who had a falling out with John in Halle Berry's Sofia, so Jeeja Yanin might better enter the John Wick universe by way of the Donnie Yen route of a friend of John's fighting alongside him without a grudge, his use of Judo and her skills in Tae Kwon Do and Muay Thai blending opposite approaches to fighting.
Bruce Khan
While more of a recent up-and-comer compared to others on this list, Bruce Khan's background in stunt work includes working alongside Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung in 2003's The Medallion, but his real claim to fame is the Netflix South Korean martial arts film Revenger, where he channels the intensity of his biggest inspiration, sword fighting seen in The Witcher, and all of it incredible even if you don't know that Khan was doing it all on what was later learned to be a herniated disk. After Revenger, the John Wick franchise could really utilize Bruce Khan's skills like no other current action series can.
JuJu Chan Szeto
A former Muay Thai and Tae Kwon Do competitor, JuJu Chan Szeto's been on the rise in the Far East for the last few years through roles in Fist of the Dragon and fitting for the High Table. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Chan Szeto was recently the more heroic Carmen in Jiu Jitsu, wielding nunchaku against an alien enemy arriving for a ritualized fight every six years. Whether as a friend or foe of John, JuJu Chan Szeto would bring a lot to the assassin world of the series, though one probably leans a bit more heavily towards the latter from her stoic performance as Zan in Wu Assassins.
Alain Moussi
Another rising star, Alain Moussi's been a stuntman on everything from Nobody (alongside John Wick luminary Daniel Bernhardt) brought a cockiness to the approachability he usually embodies. That itself has even led quite a few fans to nominate Moussi as Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 2, but a High Table assassin capable of unleashing helicopter kicks against John Wick would certainly be good casting for Chapter 5, too.
With the fallout the pandemic has wrought in the film industry and the aborted back-to-back plans for the fourth and fifth movies, it's not completely clear how much longer the John Wick series will run for. Whether it keeps going beyond Chapter 5 or if the plan is to finally conclude John's story there, the series' popularity is anything but waning. One thing's for sure - now that the John Wick franchise has set up the expectation of each new installment being an ensemble of action heroes, it certainly can't abandon that now, and it's got no shortage of new ones to bring to the High Table.
