The Film That Lit My Fuse is a Deadline video series that aims to provide an antidote to headlines about industry uncertainty by swinging the conversation back to the creative ambitions, formative influences and inspirations of some of today’s great screen artists.
Every installment asks the same five questions. Today’s subject is Chad Stahelski, who rose from a stuntman and martial arts background to become director of four John Wick films, the final of which opens today through Lionsgate and is expected to clean the clock of competitors at the weekend box office. Armed with a love of Greek mythology and history, Stahelski’s trajectory to the director’s chair is an unusual one. He graduated from a stunt double to second unit director of stunt-heavy films. He bundled all that together and teamed with Keanu Reeves — whom he met working as the star’s stunt double on the films Constantine and The Matrix trilogy — on the modest action film John Wick. The simple tale of a hitman roused from retirement when the dog left him by his late wife is cruelly killed in a home invasion, the series broadened into a mythological bonanza by unlocking the shadowy crime world that Wick thrived in and then tried to escape from.
Here, he explains the influences that helped him get there,.
