John Wick 5 to 9 are planned out, according to franchise director Chad Stahelski. But for Keanu Reeves there’s just one condition on which he’d resurrect his hitman

Earlier this year, Keanu Reeves returned in John Wick Chapter 4 but the film concluded with his assassin’s apparent death.

We saw his hitman dying from a gunshot but there was never a body before the shot of his grave.

Clearly, his fate’s finality remains up in the air depending on whether or not the star will return.

As fans enjoy prequel miniseries The Continental on Prime Video and await Reeves’ appearance as Wick in spin-off Ballerina (set before Chapter 4) next year, what of John Wick 5?

Franchise director Chad Stahelski has spoken out in a new interview on the matter. In fact, it turns out there are plans up to John Wick 9, but the titular star will only return to the role on one condition

Speaking with Inverse, Chad said: “I have notebooks and notebooks of s–t behind me, John Wicks 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. We have ideas for days. We just don’t have the story locked. I have no interest in doing the cash grab of bringing John Wick back for something. Is he a character I like? Of course. And if I did a couple of John Wick movies, great.”

On the star’s one condition, the director said: “Keanu would do one again in a second if we had a good story. We leave that open-ended. I know that the studio would love us to say we have another one.

“Keanu and I are always interested in that, but we leave it hanging out there a little bit to figure out if we have something that we’d want to watch. Second, we have a studio that’s very enthusiastic and not just financially motivated, but they’re just interested in seeing what we could do with it. So, they’ve been super cool of us this year about branching off.”

Chad added: “I know the term is spin-offs or ancillaries or whatever you want to call it. Keanu and I both went back, and we all said, ‘Look, we have ideas for the John Wick world, other characters that aren’t John Wick-centric. Would you guys be interested in exploring that?’ And they were super cool, and they said, ‘Yes, we’d be very interested in that.’

“Characters that weren’t in any of the movies that had fallen to the sidelines because they just didn’t fit in our storylines, and some existing characters that we’d like to see other things.”