John Wick producer Basil Iwanyk explains the reason why they’ve enlisted Emerald Fennell to rewrite the script for the Ballerina spinoff.

Long-time John Wick producer Basil Iwanyk teased the highly-anticipated Ballerina spinoff starring Oscar nominee Ana de Armas.

In an interview with Screen Rant, Iwanyk praised the upcoming film’s “f—ing great” script, which was written by Promising Young Woman writer-director Emerald Fennell, who signed onto the project last Nov. 2022 to rewrite Shay Hatten’s original draft. According to the producer, the Oscar-winning scribe’s addition to the spinoff gave De Armas’ character more depth and emotion. “Emerald loves the John Wick movies. Loved it. And she was like, ‘I don’t see these kinds of movies. This is awesome,'” Iwanyk said. “And she wrote a f——ng great draft. And we used a vast majority of it. And she gave that character, honest character, some — I’m not saying real, because remember we’re talking about the John Wick world, but it felt grounded, emotionally grounded as a female character. That, mixed in with her lethality, is really, really f—-ng cool.”

In addition, Iwanyk confirmed that hiring a female writer was one of the promises they made to the Glass Knives actor when they first pitched the project to her. Even though Hatten wrote a “really cool script,” they knew that the story needed a female perspective when it came to developing the film’s lead character. To avoid tropes seen in female assassin movies, they wanted de Armas’ character to be “someone that felt legit and real and ground female character.”

“Our promise to Ana was always at a certain point when we get the structure right and the action, we want to bring in a female writer in,,” he said. “What we don’t want, and this is important. We don’t want an action movie where we just took a male character, put in a female, and then just call it a day. We wanted this character to feel real, to feel feminine, to feel she wasn’t sexless, but she wasn’t objectified sexually. She wasn’t someone who doesn’t smile.”

Ballerina to Explore New Side of the John Wick Franchise

The Ballerina spinoff is directed by Underworld filmmaker Len Wiseman. The spinoff will center around a young female assassin, who was trained by the Ruska Roma syndicate, which is the same organization that crafted John Wick into becoming the unbeatable lethal assassin he’s known to be. According to Hatten, the upcoming film will introduce a “cool, unique” new side to the franchise, as the titular character “ends up going to a whole new corner of the world and a new kind of isolated community that really is unlike anything we’ve seen in these previous John Wick movies.”

Other than De Armas, the spinoff will feature The Walking Dead vet Norman Reedus, Golden Globe winner Gabriel Byrne, and Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno in undisclosed roles. They will be joined by franchise mainstays Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, and the late Lance Reddick in one of his final movie roles following his passing last March 17. It has also been confirmed that Reeves’ appearance in the spinoff is more than just a cameo. Besides Ballerina, it has also been confirmed that Lionsgate is currently planning to develop another John Wick show and anime adaptation.