[Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4]

If you’re a fan of the exceptional John Wick franchise or other standout action movies like Sicario or Wind River, you are a fan of film producer Erica Lee’s work. Since the very beginning, when Chad Stahelski’s John Wick was an independently financed standalone action flick titled Scorn, about a man and his devotion to a dog, Lee has been on board for the wild ride the saga has become. When others wouldn’t, Lee passed the script along and is now reveling in the deep lore and the following that the epic has amassed. With John Wick: Chapter 4 now in theaters, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with Lee about all things Wickiverse, the future of the franchise, and tons more.

In Chapter 4, Keanu Reeves’ near-mythical assassin, John Wick, finds himself in a race against the clock. As every choice that he’s made since the first movie has had a ripple effect in this underworld of killers, the High Table has enlisted the help of The Marquis (Bill Skarsgård) to clean up the mess. Every person John has called a friend is coming into question, and anyone willing to aid him is at risk of losing everything. When a deal is struck, Wick has one chance to set things right.

In their discussion about the franchise, Lee is more than forthcoming about the future projects within the Wickiverse, like the spin-off, Ballerina, the prequel series, The Continental, and more, calling the expanding universe a “constantly evolving ecosystem.” She gives us details, dates, and dishes on other projects like the rumored open-world John Wick video game. The producer also recalls particularly challenging shots for Chapter 4, shares her experience on the “very, very hard shoot” of the first movie, and reveals information about John Woo’s Silent Night. For all of this and so much more, you can read the full interview in the transcript below.

COLLIDER: I saw [John Wick: Chapter 4] for the first time a week ago. I would've liked to have seen the three-hour and 45-minute cut.

ERICA LEE: No, you wouldn't have.

No, I would've. I definitely would've. Although, I'd rather see it now after I've seen the full final cut, which is obviously the best version of the movie. Now, I'd like to see all the other stuff that he cut out.

LEE: There [weren't] really that many big lifts. We definitely shot a lot, but the movie's hovered around three hours for almost all of post. The 3:45 was so rough and boring in parts, and just a lot of... I mean, it was not good [Laughs]. You didn't miss anything.

Chad even said the version that's in theaters is the best version of this movie, but he said that there was more in Sacré Coeur, there's more in Berlin. Obviously, now that the John Wick movies are essentially over, is there talk of doing a big box set of the four movies, and then maybe that's an excuse to release an extended cut of the fourth one?

LEE: I mean, I'm sure that's possible. I don't know if Chad really wants that extended version out there, though. He seems pretty happy with the final cut. It's not like on previous movies where there was definitely more of a fight about the runtime. I think he felt he left stuff on the table. I think [with] 4, everything that he wants is in there. But I mean, are the John Wick movies dead? I don't know.

Keanu said the reason he wanted to make the movie was to kill John Wick.

LEE: Yeah, and look, is that character of John Wick dead? Yes. Are there other versions or... I don't know, I never say never, right? It's a long life.

Lionsgate knows what they have. That's the reason why The Continental is being made, that's the reason Ballerina was made. The universe is rich. It just doesn't have to always focus on John Wick.

LEE: No, and we're developing other properties, too, and I think that there's a lot of opportunity for movies starring other characters, or other ways to world-build, movies that are sort of handovers to different characters. Yeah, there's a lot to do, for sure.

I love Keanu as John Wick, and he is the reason people got into this franchise, but a lot of people go to the John Wick movies to see action that they're not going to see anywhere else. I do think there's a way of doing more.

LEE: Yes, and we will do more. Making Ballerina has actually been a really interesting process because it's a lot of the stuff that we take from the John Wick movies, but then it's slightly different. It's been fun to work on John Wick 4 and Ballerina kind of simultaneously, and the TV show. It's a lot of Wick, but a lot of different versions of it. The Wick movies, John Wick 4 is so driven by Chad and his ideas and thoughts, and he's truly the captain of that ship. But on Ballerina, he's a producer and he directs second unit, and he wasn't in the driver's seat on that one, because he was also in post on 4. So, it's just interesting to work on the Wick universe in different ways.

I know exactly what you're saying. One of the things about the John Wick movies, and if you're a fan of the franchise you know, the first film is made as just a movie, with no thought to a universe or sequels. Ballerina, on the other hand, is a movie that obviously you guys hope leads to other things. So, I'm curious, how has the creation of that been different than the first John Wick, and the John Wick movies? Because you clearly know the universe and you're thinking about more than just one movie.

LEE: Yeah. It's funny, Ballerina was sort of a long time coming, also. Shay Hatten was like an intern for Robert Downey Jr., I had a general meeting with him, he was a huge John Wick fan, and he wrote Ballerina in a vacuum, like as a spec script. He gave it to me, I want to say five years ago, and I read it and was like, ‘Okay.’ It was an assassin, Rooney, it was a female character, but we optioned it and we're like, ‘Let's back this into [the] John Wick universe.’

Then we started developing and making it more Wick. But this was before we'd even shot John Wick 3. [There have] been iterations along the way, and as we keep learning more about the universe and creating new characters and refining the Wick world, that sort of enters its way into Ballerina. So, even a year ago, when we were working on the script, it was like, ‘Okay, Winston was sort of there, and the Charon character, and Anjelica Huston, The Director's character,’ but it was like, ‘What do we know now? What is the state of The Continental? What is the timeline? How are we breaking it? What are the reference points we can use?’ Ballerina is this constantly evolving ecosystem of a movie. It's just been really fun to work on.

That film takes place between Wick 3 and 4. Lance, Ian, and Keanu have told me that they're all in the movie. Obviously, Lance being in the movie means even more now. I'm just curious, with Lance and Ian, are they cameos or are they a part of the movie?

LEE: They’re cameos.

So, it's like she's checking into the hotel, or something?

LEE: Yeah. I mean, Ian has a little bit more to do, and John Wick is an extended cameo. He shot for about a week. Lance shot for a day. Those were last-minute adds in a way, too. Like, ‘How do we merge the worlds a bit more, so there's a bit more of brand continuity?’ Because obviously, she's a ballerina in the Ruska Roma school, so having Anjelica as The Director was always an organic way in, and she always did check into a Continental. But then it was fun to have Ian and Lance come.

I didn't know if Keanu was going to do the movie. I think we had always hoped he would. Then the timeline thing became a thing because we were still in post on John Wick 4, and it was like, ‘Is he dead? Is he not? Is he dead? Yeah, let's do this so it makes sense chronologically and gives us a minute to figure it all out.’

Keanu and Chad told me they filmed the staircase sequence in Paris in five or six days. When I hear that, I'm like, "Well, Keanu can do anything in a week." It's crazy.

LEE: I mean, I will say that the stair sequence was one of the more painful ones to shoot. It wasn't supposed to be a six-day shoot, it was supposed to be three. We were supposed to spend more time at the top because that was also the money location, the top of the stairs, Sacré Coeur, and we kept extending our time on that set.

Well, the staircase sequence is incredible. Watching it again last night with the audience, people lose their minds at what's happening on the staircase.

LEE: Yeah, it's funny. I love, also, now that the world is embracing it, I think [there are] three or four really signature, five, pieces in the movie, so everyone has their favorite. But the stairs, again, when we were shooting it, I was like, ‘Is this going to work? I think it will.’ You never know in John Wick. It's like, ‘Is this the best thing we've ever done or the dumbest?’

Yeah, it's fantastic. I love these movies, but the first movie is a little bit more grounded. By the time you get to John Wick 4, he's Captain America, you know what I mean?

LEE: Yeah, it is. I brought my mom to the premiere, and she was like, ‘Explain to me again about the suits, and the falling.’ I'm like, ‘You got to go with it.’ I mean, we've certainly become a heightened world, hyperreal. [John Wick] 1 was very grounded, to a degree, at least the first 30 minutes of the movie. Yeah, we've come a long way in size and scope and scale, and absurdity, all of it.

Again, I love this franchise, I want to emphasize that, but the ending of 3, he gets thrown off the building and Chad said it's six months of him recovering to get ready to go out. Then in John Wick 4, he falls from that thing in the Berlin club, hits the thing, and hits the ground, and he is just getting up. Or the stairway, and he is just getting up…

LEE: Yeah. He's hit by a car. I mean, there's a lot. We definitely defy a bit of reality.

Oh, completely. By the way, I'm sure there'll be some essay online that explains how he really died in 3 and this is all his imagination, you know what I mean?

LEE: Yeah, I like that.

When you think about the whole franchise, you've been on all four movies. Talk a little bit about how it all started because this is so unusual in Hollywood to have a movie that's made under the radar and then all of a sudden have it turn into what it's become.

LEE: Yes, it's insane. The first John Wick script was called Scorn, and it was a spec script that we were submitted at Thunder Road, Basil [Iwanyk] and myself. We had a general meeting with Derek [Kolstad]. We had read another script called Acolyte, met him, he kind of pitched it to us in the room. I remember so vividly that weekend reading Scorn and thinking, and emailing Basil, I was like, ‘There's something in– I love the script. It has a lot of crazy villains and makes no sense and needs a lot of work, but it's all about a dog, and I'm a dog person.’ And I was like, ‘It's a genius concept. I think we should do it.’ Then he wrote back, ‘I agree.’ Then we optioned it and then we were kind of off to the races.

I mean, the story is, Chad and Dave [Leitch] had never... We had met previously just around town. They'd wanted to direct first unit, they hadn't, Keanu was really adamant that they have a shot at directing first unit. We were obviously going to have him do second unit regardless. The movie came together independently financed and was a very, very hard shoot, very hard.

It's funny to look back at Chad and Dave collaborating as they're both such singular visionaries now, and watching co-directorship, which is uncommon for a reason, I think. Living it in a movie that had no distribution, domestic distribution, was just– we screened it for buyers in July that year. I sat in that audience, I watched people walk out of it. I mean, it was a movie that really a lot of people didn't believe in it and didn't see coming. Lionsgate bought it and put it out that October because they had no Saw. It was a lot of arbitrary decisions that came together in a way. And then it was at Fantastic Fest. I remember Harry Knowles and people tweeting about it like, "This is what action should be." It was amazing. I mean, and here we are.

After Lionsgate bought it, it was a few weeks later, and they showed it to me and a few people in a screening room in Santa Monica. I remember sitting there halfway through the movie being like, ‘What the fuck am I watching? This is incredible.’ I remember walking out of the theater, there were like four of us, and me saying to them, ‘This is unbelievable.’ Anyway, the rest is history, obviously.

LEE: Yeah. It wasn't for everyone in the beginning. It wasn't for all the buyers, and it wasn't a sure thing by any means.

I could be wrong about this, but there was talk about it just going straight to Blu-ray or DVD.

LEE: Yeah. And it was a movie that they were like, ‘Okay, it'll work in all the foreign territories.’ Keanu was a big star in Germany and Korea and Japan. At the time, 47 Ronin was coming out. He had been in China directing Man of Tai Chi for a long time. It was like, we didn't know what the box office was going to be like.

What do you think would surprise John Wick fans to learn about the making of a John Wick movie?

LEE: That’s a really good question. I mean, they're really hard. Chad pushes everyone. He's a perfectionist. He always says, ‘In the darkness is beauty,’ and, ‘It's not worth it if there's not pain,’ things like that. These movies are crazy. I mean, John Wick 4 I think was almost a hundred days of shooting, all nights, all night shoots. Even when we're shooting in the day, we shoot at night. Just the logistics of it, it looks so fun, but the actual making of the movies is really, really hard. [There are] so many pieces to it. They're hard to watch, the dailies. For a long time, you don't know what you have as a producer, because you're shooting, like, the stairs, a week of shooting guys falling down stairs. You're like, ‘What is this?’ It's hard to know the full picture of what you have at that time.

I mean, John Wick, the movies are so pure. I was saying we always end each one, we leave it all in the field, we burn the whole house down. So we're like, ‘Are we making another one?’ I remember after John Wick 3 [we were] like, ‘No, we're not going to do another one, are we?’ It's always like, a month or so passes. I remember Chad called and he was like, ‘We're thinking snow, nunchucks, a little bit…’ and I was like, ‘Okay, we have a movie.’ And it's a movie based on four concepts or four things, and that's where it all happens. It’s really these kernels of ideas that just grow into these epic movies.

Yeah. Chad and Keanu told me that it really is about the whiskey they're drinking at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

LEE: In Tokyo. I will say, we were joking, because the Japan trip this year is in September, and I was like, ‘Well, what's going to come out of that one?’ Because by that time, the dust has settled, and everyone has had some time to reflect and think about what they would do next, and what we want to see more of, and there's feedback from critics and reviews, and you have time to think about it. I also think everyone's rejuvenated by that point.

Yeah, it's crazy that Japan won't get it until then. I heard Silent Night turned out great.

LEE: Yes.

So, you can confirm, it really has no dialogue?

LEE: It really has no dialogue. It was another spec script that I was given and read, and I was like, ‘This is either going to be a genius move or a disaster, there's no in-between.’ It's execution-dependent, for sure. I mean, John Woo kills it. Joel Kinnaman is the star and really delivers. I mean, there's some ambient noise and background and chatter like radio and stuff like that, but, yeah, it's awesome. I can't wait for you to see it.

So, I heard that a lot of the John Wick stunt team wanted to work on it because of John Woo.

LEE: Yeah, it's funny, I mean, Chad has a picture of himself and John Woo in his office. He's a seminal action director and designer. It was fun. Actually, I was on John Wick 4, we were at Sacré Coeur, and I remember talking to Jeremy Marinas, who was the coordinator. I was like, ‘Do you want to come do this John Woo movie with me after?’ He was like, ‘Uhh, yeah.’ That's how it started.

Obviously the movie is going to have incredible action because it's John Woo and the John Wick team. What can you tease about some of the action?

LEE: That’s a good question. It's very operatic. It's very John Woo-esque. I mean, we're really lucky we got to partner with Joel Kinnaman because he's a lot like Keanu where he puts in the work. He was at 87eleven on his off days. He was 87eleven before he even got this part. So, it's a lot of similar where it's him, he's doing the work. It's a bit more grounded, setting-wise, than Wick, or anything like that. I mean, it's set in East L.A. So, there's an epic car chase. There's just really cool stuff, I can't tell too much.

Got it. When do you think I'm actually going to see a trailer or some footage?

LEE: I think by the summer I think we'll have a trailer.

Okay. Switching gears into something else. I am very curious about The Continental. A few quick questions right off the bat. How many episodes is it?

LEE: Right now, it's three episodes, three 90-minute episodes, like three kind of mini-movies.

So, my next thing is, it takes place, from what I understand, in the '70s, and it's a young Winston. How did you guys come up with that idea as far as, that's where we wanted to pick The Continental?

LEE: Yeah. It's young Winston and young Lance Reddick, young Charon. The showrunners actually came, we heard a lot of pitches, and we were debating whether or not we wanted to do a similar timeline of John Wick or an alternate timeline. We felt like doing a prequel, doing an alternate timeline, gave us a lot of flexibility just in running parallel tracks. But also, what I think people love so much about John Wick and the John Wick world is learning about the hotels and the Easter eggs. We give so little about each character and about the hotel in each movie that I think people were really excited to learn more and dig deeper into The Continental, like, ‘What does the cleaner there look like? What is the staff like? How do you get into The Continental? How are the gold coins made?’ So, with this timeline and this setting, we're allowed to do a really deep dive into that and explore a lot of that stuff.

When is it actually coming out? Because I believe it's coming out in America on Peacock.

LEE: Yes, in September.

Does that mean that maybe you might be at Comic-Con with it?

LEE: That’s a great question. I would love to be at Comic-Con. We have such good experiences at Comic-Con with Wick and Wick universe. We just locked “Night One,” and we're just getting into the publicity plan, but that would be a great idea. We should be there.

With the three episodes, because one of the things about the Wick movies is, there's dialogue and then there are huge action set pieces. Are you guys following a similar formula with The Continental or is it more character-based with select action?

LEE: I think in TV, generally, it's more character-based, but there is a lot of action in the shows. I mean, we open with an action sequence in “One.” I think it's a good balance. “One” and “Three” have an enormous amount of action. “Two” is a little bit more story. That's like how it breaks out structurally, but there's plenty of action.

The three episodes, do they take place near each other or are they time jumps?

LEE: No, it's one continuation.

You know going in with The Continental that, if it's a hit, they're going to want more episodes. So how much, when you, the showrunners, were discussing it, were you thinking or laying out, ‘Okay, what's our plan if this is a hit?’ How much are you thinking about that before you even shoot the first episode?

LEE: The way that we've written it, it's a great jumping-off point. [There are] plenty of places to go from where we ended in “Night Three,” and we're always thinking about that. I think right now we're thinking more and more deeply as we lock the third episode. As Wick 4 comes out, and the trajectory, and the universe builds and builds and builds, and Ballerina is in post, it's all an ecosystem that's moving at the same time. We’re always thinking about it.

My last thing for you, you have Ballerina, you have Continental, but I'm sure Lionsgate is interested in exploring whatever else you can come up with, whether it be video games. By the way, where is the open-world John Wick video game?

LEE: We’re doing a video game.

I heard, but is it soon, or is it years away?

LEE: I think it's soon. I mean, we're deeply working on it, so it's not years away.

Do you know what the next thing will be in the John Wick universe that has not been announced yet?

LEE: There is another film that we're developing that I think we'll be announcing in the next, say, month or two. Then, I'm hopeful there's a Ballerina 2 and John Wick 5, and lots of other things. But we're developing a lot of stuff and having a lot of discussions with a lot of writers. Brand management and Wick universe is my utmost priority.

If you've seen John Wick: Chapter 4, check out Collider's spoiler Q&A with Reeves and Stahelski below. Otherwise, Chapter 4 is now playing in theaters, so grab your tickets and come back for tons of behind-the-scenes info.