As the John Wick franchise continues to grow, there are quite a few action stars and big-screen martial artists the series should seriously consider bringing aboard. When John Wick began with its first entry in 2014, it was widely seen primarily as Keanu Reeves' mainstream return, and the series has only gotten bigger and more incredible with its action, stunt work, and fight scenes, in addition to its elaborate world-building. Since John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum, the series has also begun bringing aboard as many renowned stars in the martial arts movie world with each new chapter.
Parabellum saw the addition of Mark Dacascos, Tiger Chen, Yayan Ruhian, and Cecep Arif Rahman as fellow assassins pursuing John. The upcoming John Wick: Chapter 4 is keeping that trend going with Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanada, Scott Adkins, and Marko Zaror on board. Right now, how they'll fit into the story isn't fully known, though Yen's character is said to be a friend of John's, while Zaror is reportedly one of the main assassins in pursuit of him.
While John Wick: Chapter 5 was originally intended to film back-to-back with its predecessor, the COVID-19 pandemic led to John Wick: Chapter 4's production being delayed, with the sequel now moving ahead as a singular production. Still, with the gimmick the series has set up in bringing several big martial arts stars into each new installment, it should keep that tradition going for the remainder of the series. Here are some action stars that the John Wick franchise should bring in.
Michael Jai White
First arriving on the radar in the 1997 superhero movie Spawn, Michael Jai White is well-recognized as one of the premier martial artists in action movies today. White showed his talent at portraying villains as the superhuman A.I. known as S.E.T.H. opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in Universal Soldier: The Return, and after appearing opposite Scott Adkins in Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing, White's work in action movies has included hits like Blood and Bone, Falcon Rising, Skin Trade, The Expendables-style martial arts ensemble Triple Threat, and he even stepped into directing with the sequels in the Never Back Down MMA series, Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown and Never Back Down: No Surrender. White's talent for comedy was also seen in the modern blaxploitation movie Black Dynamite, and he would even portray Jackson "Jax" Briggs in the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy. As both heroes and villains alike, White is an always commanding on-screen presence, one with the agility of a man half his size in his action scenes, and having him as a High Table enforcer or rival assassin would give John Wick give a challenge to overcome.
Jean-Claude Van Damme
The Muscles for Brussels has had quite a career, to say the least, and now as an elder statesman of action movies, Jean-Claude Van Damme's trademark split and poker-faced persona would fit in well in the John Wick universe. First breaking through in 1988's Bloodsport, Van Damme's martial arts ability made him a staple of '80s and '90s action movies from Kickboxer to Timecop. As the landscape shifted in later years, Van Damme revamped himself into the persona of a grizzled tough guy who has been around the block and been through a lot, particularly in his team-ups with Scott Adkins and his return to the Universal Soldier franchise with Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning. Van Damme also relished hamming it up as the villainous Jean-Vilain in The Expendables 2, and that role, in particular, set a great template for what he could bring to John Wick as a shadowy High Table senior who commands from behind-the-scenes but can also give John a run for his money in a head-to-head battle.
Tony Jaa
Back in the early 2000s when it seemed the fight scenes of every action movie were simply knocking off The Matrix, Tony Jaa came out of nowhere and changed everything with the blisteringly powerful Muay Thai action of Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior. Jaa's emphasis on death-cheating stunt work and electrically real martial arts was right out of the Police Story days of Jackie Chan's early career, which Jaa continued in his 2005 follow-up Tom Yum Goong (released in the West as The Protector) and the two Ong Bak prequels. Following a sabbatical from movies in a Buddhist monastery, Jaa returned in 2013's Tom Yum Goong 2, but it was really his 2015 trifecta of Skin Trade, Furious 7, and SPL 2: A Time for Consequences (English title: Kill Zone 2), which marked an important milestone for Jaa's Hong Kong debut, that set his action movie legacy in stone. By 2019, Jaa was co-anchoring Triple Threat, and he remains as engaging a presence in action movies as they come. The idea of Tony Jaa in John Wick: Chapter 5 would be news of the internet-breaking variety, and one can seriously hope it could come to pass.
Iko Uwais
After making The Raid movies, does Indonesia's Iko Uwais even need an introduction? Making his film debut in Gareth Evans' first feature, 2009's Merantau, Uwais helped bring Indonesia's native martial art Pencak Silat to the spotlight of action movies, and he and Evan completely blew expectations away with The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2. The two would become some of the most acclaimed action movies of all time and set a standard for martial arts films for years to come that the John Wick series has arguably been among the few to be fully equal. Though The Raid 3 never happened, Uwais later made the trek to Hollywood, and while he was completely sidelined in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he eventually got to battle aliens in Beyond Skyline and co-lead the martial arts uber-ensemble Triple Threat in 2019. Uwais also made further hits on his home turf in Headshot and The Night Comes For Us, and brought his Silat skills to the Netflix series Wu Assassins, with a follow-up movie Wu Assassins: Fistful of Vengeance also on the way. As stated above, two of Uwais' co-stars from The Raid movies, Ruhian and Arif Rahman, were seen in Parabellum, so Uwais himself solidified as a martial arts movie legend through his mentor role in Snake Eyes, is a no-brainer to join the club.
Tak Sakaguchi
Western audiences might not recognize Tak Sakaguchi as readily as other action stars from the East, but his more niche familiarity outside of Japan could be a win-win situation for the John Wick franchise. Sakaguchi left the underground fighting world to make his film debut in the 2000's Versus, often described as The Evil Dead meets Highlander and a cult classic over two decades later, and he later anchored action movies like Alive, Death Trance, and Tokyo Gore Police. Sakaguchi also recently headlined Crazy Samurai: 400 vs 1, portraying legendary ronin Miyamoto Mushashi taking on hundreds of opponents in a 77-minute, single-take katana battle. Still, for as much of a herculean achievement as that film was, 2016's Re: Born is one of few assassin action movies to genuinely rival the John Wick series, Sakaguchi's portrayal of Toshiro Kuroda embodying an equal to John Wick if there has ever been one. English-speaking audiences will see Sakaguchi in the Nicolas Cage vehicle Prisoners of the Ghostland, but his talent as a martial artist and skill at portraying stone-faced warriors make him a natural for the John Wick universe.
Jeeja Yanin
As a first-time actress and action star, Jeeja Yanin helped make 2008's Chocolate into the next Ong Bak as an autistic young woman who turns herself into a warrior. Yanin would later be seen in other action films like Raging Phoenix, Tom Yum Goong 2, and Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown. Though she was unfortunately underutilized in Triple Threat (though far less so than in Hard Target 2), Yanin's been a key player of some of Thailand's most memorable action movies, with Chocolate especially showing her strengths as Thailand's answer to Gunpowder Milkshake's Michelle Yeoh, and in a first time outing that quite clearly involved lots of pain. Parabellum already had a female friend who had a falling out with John in Halle Berry's Sofia, so Jeeja Yanin might better enter the John Wick universe by way of the Donnie Yen route of a friend of John's fighting alongside him without a grudge, his use of Judo and her skills in Tae Kwon Do and Muay Thai blending opposite approaches to fighting.
Bruce Khan
While more of a recent up-and-comer compared to others on this list, Bruce Khan's background in stunt work includes working alongside Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung in 2003's The Medallion, but his real claim to fame is the Netflix South Korean martial arts film Revenger, where he channels the intensity of his biggest inspiration, The Silent Flute's Bruce Lee. True to its title, Revenger sees Khan as a Korean cop out to avenge his wife and daughter's death at the hands of a crime boss sent to an island prison and who now rules over it. You could count on one hand the number of lines Khan has in Revenger as protagonist Kim Yul, and yet for a first-time leading man just entering his fifties, he makes an amazing impression as a man whose entire focus is on his vengeance and who will allow nothing and no one to stand in his way. The action scenes of Revenger are also astonishing in their blend of grace and power, including a beach smackdown with Yul bound in a straightjacket and a battle worthy of the sword fighting seen in The Witcher, and all of it incredible even if you don't know that Khan was doing it all on what was later learned to be a herniated disk. After Revenger, the John Wick franchise could really utilize Bruce Khan's skills like no other current action series can.
JuJu Chan Szeto
A former Muay Thai and Tae Kwon Do competitor, JuJu Chan Szeto's been on the rise in the Far East for the last few years through roles in Fist of the Dragon and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. Most Western audiences primarily know her as the sinister Zan on Netflix's Wu Assassins, which she'll return to in the sequel film, Wu Assassins: Fistful of Vengeance. Chan Szeto's portrayal of Zan was exactly the kind of cold-blooded killing machine that could have been pulled right out of the John Wick franchise, Zan's bladed stilettos a tool of assassination certainly fitting for the High Table. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Chan Szeto was recently the more heroic Carmen in Jiu Jitsu, wielding nunchaku against an alien enemy arriving for a ritualized fight every six years. Whether as a friend or foe of John, JuJu Chan Szeto would bring a lot to the assassin world of the series, though one probably leans a bit more heavily towards the latter from her stoic performance as Zan in Wu Assassins.
Alain Moussi
Another rising star, Alain Moussi's been a stuntman on everything from Immortals (doubling for Henry Cavill) to Suicide Squad (doubling for Jai Courtney), before taking on the role of Charlie Nash in 2016's Street Fighter: Resurrection, an interquel to the 2014's Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist. His big break was portraying Kurt Sloan in Kickboxer: Vengeance and Kickboxer: Retaliation, later following up with Jake Barnes in the 2020 sci-fi martial arts flick Jiu Jitsu, one of numerous alien invasion-martial arts movie hybrids of the past few years. Moussi's amiable charisma lends itself to both heroes and villains, Kurt Sloan being as straight an arrow as they come, while his bus brawl as a gang member against Bob Odenkirk in Nobody (alongside John Wick luminary Daniel Bernhardt) brought a cockiness to the approachability he usually embodies. That itself has even led quite a few fans to nominate Moussi as Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 2, but a High Table assassin capable of unleashing helicopter kicks against John Wick would certainly be good casting for Chapter 5, too.
With the fallout the pandemic has wrought in the film industry and the aborted back-to-back plans for the fourth and fifth movies, it's not completely clear how much longer the John Wick series will run for. Whether it keeps going beyond Chapter 5 or if the plan is to finally conclude John's story there, the series' popularity is anything but waning. One thing's for sure - now that the John Wick franchise has set up the expectation of each new installment being an ensemble of action heroes, it certainly can't abandon that now, and it's got no shortage of new ones to bring to the High Table.
