JOHN WICK Is Coming For You In Virtual Reality

When John Wick premiered at Fantastic Fest last year, it received not only fervent admiration, but speculation. It’s the kind of movie whose setting, concepts, and characters spark the imagination. Many conversations were had about how Keanu and friends could form the basis for comics, further films, TV - and given its exceptional gunplay, video games.

It didn’t take long. Developer Starbreeze (of The Chronicles of Riddick, Payday, and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons) has teamed up with Lionsgate, mobile studio Grab Games and VR startup WEVR (into which SteamVR's HTC recently invested $10 million) to develop a virtual reality shooter based on John Wick and its upcoming sequel, John Wiick. It’ll come out next year for “most” VR headsets, which presumably means no Virtual Boy support. What’s more, Starbreeze is “integrating” John Wick further into their rather enjoyable heist shooter Payday 2, following up the Wick player model they introduced recently.

John Wick is a terrific film to adapt into a video game. It already kind of feels inspired by them; the styling of the action setpieces and dry pulpiness of the dialogue fits games perfectly. I’d be curious to see how Wick’s sheer killing efficiency could be communicated in a game mechanic - it screams out for some unique twist that differentiates it from just wild shooting. As for virtual reality, it’ll suffer all player-movement issues that plague the medium, but I’m keen to see what Starbreeze do with it. Hopefully, using Wick’s hyper-formal pistol-grip stance will be mandatory.

Going deeper than action, though, turning John Wick into a transmedia project is perfect for the property. One thing I’ve heard a lot of people say about the movie is that it feels like an adaptation of a comic book that never existed, thanks to its rich world-building and colourful background characters. I’m excited to explore the assassins-only hotel / secret society The Continental, with all its rules and strange denizens, whether it be in a film sequel or a video game tie-in or whatever. It’s the kind of wonderfully weird concept that could support a whole range of stories.*

Or the John Wick game could be thirty hours of virtual-reality dog patting, accompanied by quiet Keanu Reeves chuckling. I’d be into that.

* My kingdom for a Four Rooms-style Continental anthology movie.