How 'John Wick' star Keanu Reeves took script originally written for a ’75-year-old man’ and ‘made it his own’
Keanu Reeves has played the iconic action hero John Wick for nearly a decade, but the role was originally meant to be written for an older actor such as Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford. One of the "John Wick" producers, Basil Iwanyk, revealed in the new book, "They Shouldn’t Have Killed His Dog: The Complete Uncensored Oral History of John Wick, Gun Fu, and the New Age of Action," by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, that the legendary assassin was supposed to be played by a 75-year-old man. Iwanyk said in the book that one of his best friends sent him a script from Derek Kolstad — the creator of the "John Wick" franchise — according to Entertainment Weekly. "The lead was a 75-year-old man, 25 years after being retired.