John Wick Is Named After A Real Midwest Businessman With Close Ties To The Film's Writer
"John Wick: Chapter 4" has cemented the series' standing as a blockbuster franchise, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie since the pandemic began. Keanu Reeves' massively popular hitman has shot, punched, and even sliced open the heads of innumerable opponents on his way to establishing himself as a box office force to be reckoned with. And considering where the series started, that's a seriously impressive feat.
Back in 2014, when the first "John Wick" debuted, no one was expecting the film to do much. With a distinctly B-movie plot and a leading man whose star was fading in the run-up to the movie's release, "John Wick" looked destined to be a forgotten direct-to-video actioner; even when it was acquired by a studio, no one could predict it would become the catalyst for one of the best modern action franchises to date. But writer Derek Kolstad had a trick up his sleeve.
By this point, we should all agree that the first "John Wick" is easily the best of the series. That's because of Kolstad's unique take on the action franchise. By combining classic action tropes (such as having characters other than the protagonist talk up his elite skills) with subversive takes on the genre, Kolstad created something fresh for audiences who were quickly becoming burned out on the gritty reboot style action thriller that dominated the 2000s. And he did so with a simple formula. As he explained during an interview at the Austin Film Festival, "In everything we do, you simplify the character. Plot's important but should be lean, and you allude to a larger world even if you don't see it." In the spirit of keeping things simple, he turned to his own life experience when it came to naming his ruthless protagonist.
The original John Wick was no assassin
Simplicity is key to the "John Wick" franchise, both in terms of the overall approach and the details. As Derek Kolstad told /Film in 2017, "[Keanu Reeves] came on board, and I worked with him so much on the script. Paragraphs of his dialogue became 'uh-huh,' or a look." Paring down the dialogue was part of what helped build the mystique of the so-called Baba Yaga, and Kolstad's original spec script was called "Scorn" before it ended up with the "John Wick" title.
Kolstad, who hails from Madison, Wisconsin and who moved to LA 15 years prior to selling his "Scorn" script, had been working towards his big break since giving up a career in business administration. But he always maintained a sense of his past when writing screenplays. As he told Collider, "If you go back to any other specs [I've written], you're gonna see all of the credited names on the posters for 'Dirty Dozen,' 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,' 'Ronin,' because they were on my walls." And when it came to "Scorn," he borrowed directly from his own life.
Speaking to Madison Magazine, the writer revealed that he named the lead character after his own grandfather. The original John Wick was about as far from a highly-skilled assassin as you can get. A businessman who founded Wick Building Systems in Madison in 1955, Wick told the magazine, "I was tickled by Derek using my name for a movie, and the hitman character was frosting on the cake."
Originally, John Wick wasn't expecting to have his name plastered all over posters and promotional material. But thanks to Reeves, not only did the businessman have his name in a movie, he soon became the title.
'What if the worst possible man in existence could find salvation?'
Back when Kolstad's original script was called "Scorn," Keanu Reeves and the writer worked diligently to develop it. And, as Kolstad told Collider, it was thanks to the leading man that the title became "John Wick." The writer explained: "Keanu spent so much time referring to it as 'John Wick,' the marketing department's like, 'Just call it 'John Wick,' it's gonna glean us a great deal of free press.' And so it was just kind of like in the moment."
Now, it's strange to think of the "John Wick" series being called anything else. "John Wick: Chapter 4" set a new franchise record with its $73.5 million box office debut, confirming the titular hitman has come a long way from the days of "Scorn." And during that journey, the name John Wick has taken on a life of its own, essentially becoming a verb for doing anything with effortless skill and intensity. In that sense, Kolstad certainly John Wick'd his way to success with "Scorn," even if it did go through some changes along the way.
Strangely, it seems the original John Wick never saw the final film, with Kolstad explaining that the last R-rated film the real Wick saw was the Harvey Keitel-starring "The Piano" from 1993. That was apparently enough to make the Wisconsin magnate swear off watching more adult fare going forward. Which might be a good thing, seeing as Kolstad described the central idea of "John Wick" in a 2014 interview as: "What if the worst possible man in existence could find salvation?" While I'm sure John Wick is proud of his grandson, it seems unlikely that lending his name to "worst possible man in existence" was at the top of his business aspirations.