Lionsgate Cuts Down John Wick 4’s Original Four-Hour Runtime
Lionsgate’s highly-anticipated action-packed film, John Wick 4, was initially almost a four-hour long movie but was eventually cut down to a final runtime of two hours and forty-nine minutes by director Chad Stahelski and editor Nathan Orloff. According to IndieWire, the first cut of the film was three hours and forty-five minutes, and it felt like it too.
Despite the long runtime, the increase came from world-building that was later stripped away during the editing process.
Struggling with pacing
The long runtime wasn’t the only issue Stahelski and Orloff faced during the editing process. They struggled to maintain good pacing throughout John Wick 4 as they ripped out significant chunks of the film. “Even if we just took 30 seconds out of something, I’d make everybody watch the movie again,” Stahelski said. He was joking, but the process took a long time.
Worth the wait?
In the end, it appeared that the editing process paid off. IGN awarded John Wick: Chapter 4 a 10/10 in their review. “John Wick: Chapter 4 stands above its predecessors — and the past decade’s worth of action films as a whole — as a modern epic, something Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski have been driving at since 2014.”
With the success of the franchise, it seems like fans can expect more exciting films from Lionsgate following John Wick’s action-packed adventures.