More details have been revealed about Lionsgate's upcoming John Wick spinoff show, including its episode lengths and the identity of The Continental's protagonist.
Lionsgate TV head Kevin Beggs stated that it will cover the early years of New York Continental owner Winston and his relation with the hotel that John Wick (Keanu Reeves) frequently visits. According to Beggs, The Continental's premise came from a creative team behind the 2019 YouTube action-comedy series Wayne, who suggested that it take place in "a crumbling New York in the 1970s with a garbage strike that has piled up bags of garbage to the third floor of most brownstones."
He added, "The mafia muscling in on that business which is why in The Sopranos he's in the sanitation business, and other things that are really real as an interesting backdrop to explore the origins of The Continental which is famously within the movie franchise the assassin's hotel in which you cannot kill anyone on the hotel grounds, but of course if you step one foot off you're fair game, and that's employed to great effect in many of the plots in the movies. Running all of that is Winston, who is played by Ian McShane (in the movies)."
"What we're exploring in The Continental is the young Winston and how it came to be that he and his team of confederates found their way into this hotel which we have met for the first time in the movie franchise 40 years later," he continued. "That's the arena. I won't give away more than that, but Starz really leaned into this take also, and they have been great collaborators. And how we've approached this first season is as three essentially 90-minute events which you could construe as a limited series or a limited event series."
Ian McShane has played Winston across all three John Wick movies, serving as the Continental's owner and Wick's ally who regularly enforces the assassin hotel's strict guidelines, namely that no business can be conducted inside. After Wick broke that rule at the end of Chapter 2, Winston was forced to declare him "excommunicado" but gave Wick a head start before it could be put into effect, a decision that put him in legal jeopardy with the High Council Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) during Chapter 3 – Parabellum. McShane has also teased his involvement with the franchise's fourth entry, titled John Wick: Chapter 4, which may start production this year.
No release date or castings for The Continental have been announced yet. John Wick: Chapter 4, directed by Chad Stahelski and starring Keanu Reeves, will arrive in theaters May 27, 2022.