John Wick: Chapter Three is officially happening with a release date of May 17, 2019 having been set by Lionsgate. It's the first summer release for the franchise, which has been a surprise workhorse at the box office so far, reaffirming Reeves' status as an action star.

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The release date was revealed by Hollywood Reporter, though no plot details have been divulged just yet. Keanu Reeves will reprise his role as the titular character, a hitman, expert marksman and deadly fighter. John Wick: Chapter Two saw the main character on the run with a ridiculous bounty and an army of hitmen on his heels.

“We’re currently in the middle of writing it right now,” Chad Stahelski revealed in May. “It’s more of a how fast can we get our sh** together. But I would assume that if not by the end of this year, the beginning of next year.” It seems that Stahelski's plan worked out, as the movie will film in 2018 to achieve it's release date.

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Lionsgate is rapidly expanding the John Wick universe. The company recently won a bidding war for a female-centric action script titled Ballerina, which will act as a spin-off from the main series. Story details are sparse, but it's said to center around a young woman who's trained to be an assassin who eventually tracks down the assassin group that murdered her family. Not only that, but Stahelski is developing a prequel television series, too.

"We basically almost have a prequel written, but we’d save that for other aspects of the property," Stahelski said in an interview earlier this year. "Lionsgate is very interested in doing a John Wick TV show, and that seems very appealing to us. I think in TV you could really expand on what that is, and greater than we could in just a two-hour film. We’d like to wrap-up the story we’re telling now and maybe save all our prequel ideas and impossible task ideas for that medium.”

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John Wick: Chapter Three sees Keanu Reeves reprise his role in the R-rated action franchise that is scheduled to release on May 17, 2019. The first movie in the franchise grossed $88 million worldwide in 2014, with the sequel earning $171 million after its 2017 release.  The franchise is also receiving a prequel comic tie-in series from Dynamite Entertainment, with Grek Pak as writer and Giovanni Valletta as artist.