INGLEWOOD, Calif.—Chad Stahelski and David Leitch speak in shorthand when it comes to shooting sprees. Also mixed martial arts throw-downs, crazy car crashes, and escaping explosions.
After 20 years of performing, choreographing, coordinating, and directing movie stunts together—not to mention setting up their own stunt company—Stahelski and Leitch have become experts at big-screen action.
Starting as stunt doubles for Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt, they’ve grown to oversee stunt action on blockbuster fare such as “The Wolverine,” ‘'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,“ and ”The Hunger Games” franchise. For the last few years, they’ve been ready to take the next step: finding a film of their own to direct.
Reeves helped make that happen when he introduced them to “John Wick,” an action-saturated thrill ride opening today.
“When I got the script ... I immediately thought of Chad and Dave for the action design, but I was secretly hoping they'd want to direct it,” Reeves said in a recent interview. “I knew that they would love the genre and I knew that they would love John Wick. And I thought the worlds that get created—the real world and then this underworld—would be attractive to them, and it was.”
Reeves stars as the titular character, a retired killer-for-hire who’s drawn back into the underworld, seeking revenge after a group of thugs steal his car and kill the dog given to him by his dead wife. Willem Dafoe also stars.
After reading the script, Stahelski and Leitch, both martial arts experts and Bruce Lee fans, told Reeves they wanted to tell the story of “John Wick” with a graphic-novel twist, creating a stylized, heightened reality where the suit-clad killer could systematically shoot 84 people in a nightclub without batting an eye or wrinkling his clothes.
They also wanted to craft a character whose outsized motivations would make sense to audiences. And they wanted to prove to themselves that, after 20 years in the movie business, they could tell a story from top to bottom as filmmakers.
“It was the challenge—and the ego of ourselves—to prove that we could do something different,” said Stahelski, a tall, lean man in his mid-40s with an authoritative demeanor that belies his easy smile. He’s been friends with Reeves since working as his stunt double in “The Matrix” movies.
Reeves supported the pair’s pitch to producers, and the veteran stuntmen had their first directing gig.
