Ayomide Adegun as Charon in ‘The Continental: From the World of John Wick’
Katalin Vermes/Starz Entertainment
The upcoming John Wick event series, a three-part movie from director and executive producer Albert Hughes, finally has an air date.
The Continental: From the World of John Wick will premiere on Sept. 22. That will follow with night two airing Sept. 29 and night three airing Oct. 6.
The announcement was made during Peacock’s panel for the series at San Diego Comic-Con.
Hughes was on stage along with executive producer Marshall Persinger and the creative team, including action director Larnell Stovall, production designer Drew Boughton and editor Ron Rosen.
A prequel to the massively popular action movie franchise will explore the origin behind the iconic hotel-for-assassins at the center of the John Wick universe and seen through the eyes and actions of a young man named Winston Scott, as he’s dragged into the Hellscape of 1970s New York City to face a past he thought he’d left behind.
Scott is a key figure in the Wick movies, acting as the manager of the hotel and played by Ian McShane. Colin Woodell plays young Scott in the series, whose cast also includes Mel Gibson, Michel Prada, Ben Robson, Jessica Allain, among others.
Hughes directed the first and third installments and talked about being thrust into the Wick world of action and stunt work, as well as dealing with the expectations of living up to the movies.
“Fun and escapism, not being too heavy, that’s the thing I learned,” he said, noting that as the story was set in the 1970s, he considered having story beats about a mayoral race or a sanitation strike or even Summer of Sam. “John Wick kicks all that out.”
The panel showed off four clips, with the first being a banger that features actor Ben Robson as Frankie, the brother to Scott, who fights his way up a stairwell. The sequence features the things Wick fans would want: head shots, close-quarter hand-to-hand combat, blood spurts and bodies everywhere.
Hughes and Stovall dove behind the making of the sequence, describing how it was shot in one day, with the 6-foot-5 actor who had trained three weeks just for the occasion.
In fact, one of the biggest cheers and applause moments came when Stovall praised Hughes for his respect for the workers behind the action.
“I have been blessed to work on a lot of films, big-budget to independents, arthouse and franchises, and I have to say that Albert Hughes is the first director that as a filmmaker entrusts his stunt team and second unit to be a visual extension of his creativity. That’s something we don’t get,” Stovall said. “These stunt people and those who design these sequences deserve their work to be seen and not be chopped up.”
Speaking of action, Hughes promised a lot of it, adding that the third installment, once it gets going, will not let up. He said, “It’s 57 minutes non-stop.”
