‘Ballerina’ director Len Wiseman reveals Norman Reedus sequel idea: ‘I have plans’

This article contains spoilers for Ballerina.

It’s not quite time for Norman Reedus to bow out of the world of John Wick — that is, if Ballerina director Len Wiseman gets his way.

The Walking Dead star Reedus made his John Wick debut in the spinoff movie Ballerina as Daniel Pine, an assassin who would do anything to protect his young daughter Ella (Ava Joyce McCarthy) from becoming a killer herself. Daniel is only in two scenes in the movie — one at the beginning where he works with Eve (Ana de Armas) to try to keep Ella away from the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), and another at the very end when he’s reunited with his daughter while he heals from his injuries — but the director has an idea in mind that would bring the character back for a sequel.

“I cast Norman Reedus because I have plans for him,” Wiseman tells Entertainment Weekly. “And I would love to see him come back in a way that he’s now kind of indebted to her.”

Eve’s revenge mission ultimately leads her to save young Ella from the Chancellor’s plans to groom her into one of his assassins. She brings Ella back to Daniel for an emotional father-daughter reunion, and Wiseman hopes to continue to explore that relationship in another movie.

“I have a little bit of a plan for that,” the filmmaker says. “And then also how he’s connected, and what his family connection is [to the Chancellor’s cult].”

The director also has another idea for a sequel that would focus more on Eve now that she has discovered the truth about her origins: just like Ella, she was also stolen away from the Chancellor’s cult of assassins as a child. While her long-lost older sister Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno) died during her fight with Eve, the filmmaker has plans to mine even more trauma for the young assassin with another family member.

“At one point I had [in the script] that she meets her mother, and we never got there,” Wiseman says. “We were maybe going to shoot the scene, but that’s always something that we hear, her mother’s dead, but in this world, you never know who’s really dead. There was an element of, when Eve does get the contract on her at the end, we don’t necessarily know for sure who put that contract on her. And if that path led to that, maybe her own mother [put the hit on her]. That would be brutal.”

Wiseman would love to see his “full fantasy wish” come true, meeting Eve’s believed-to-be-dead mother, especially after Eve destroyed her tribe’s town.

“Her mother still will need to return to that village and see it decimated, and her daughter has been killed,” the director says. “So the ramifications can come in many different forms.”

While the filmmaker doesn’t want to “curse” himself with planning too far ahead in the future, he hopes that the Ballerina (pointe-shoe-wearing) leg of the John Wick franchise is only just beginning.

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“I am hoping that everybody loves this character,” Wiseman says of de Armas’ titular killer. “I really just focus on the one movie at a time, but it would be great. I would love it if it were to continue. But I don’t think she replaces [Keanu Reeves’] John as a franchise lead. I think she’s a new character in the world to follow.”

Wiseman laughs as he adds, “I don’t think anybody replaces John Wick. I just don’t think it’s possible.”

Ballerina is now playing in theaters.