Keanu Reeves shows Hollywood how to make money

Keanu Reeves as the title character in John Wick: Chapter 2.

Keanu Reeves as the title character in John Wick: Chapter 2.

Published Feb 19, 2017

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New York - Keanu Reeves, now pushing 52, is a hot commodity again. Yes,

2017 just got that much stranger.

John Wick: Chapter 2, the latest vehicle for the 1990s

heartthrob, garnered an estimated $30 million in domestic ticket sales in its

first weekend. That’s more than double the amount raked in by the first film,

and the fourth best debut of the year. (The movie took in an additional

$10.6 million in international markets.)

Reeves, one of the most volatile assets in Hollywood, isn’t

known as the best of actors, and has certainly had some stinkers over the

years. For every Matrix, there’s a Johnny Mnemonic, for every Speed, a Sweet

November. Most recently, Reeves headlined 47 Ronin, an opulent martial arts

spectacle that flopped about as hard as a movie can.

In short, Reeves is a genuine movie star, but a streaky one.

Of his major films, the correlation between box-office revenue and critical

score on Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews, is an anemic .5. Which is

to say, some of his most lucrative movies are also some of his most panned

projects.

However, Reeves finally appears to have found his groove.

The two John Wick films are among the most-praised pieces of his career. To be

sure, there isn’t much to these movies: The special effects are minimal and the

plot spartan: a slighted thug kills someone’s dog and steals his car … the

wrong someone, it turns out.

The action, however, is constant. The cinematography is sharp,

and the stunts are sublime. If The Avengers is the action film equivalent of a

poetry slam, the Wick films are haiku. They are everything a would-be

blockbuster like 47 Ronin is not. Most importantly, they weren’t that expensive

to make—the Hollywood equivalent of a value stock.

Lions Gate Entertainment picked up distribution rights for

the first Wick film just 11 weeks before its debut. With a slight marketing

nudge, it became a very profitable asset, garnering a respectable $44 million

in domestic theaters before making a particularly strong run on digital

streaming platforms.

“You think ’What’s the big franchise that comes after Hunger

Games and Divergent?’ Guess what, it’s John Wick,” said comScore analyst

Paul Dergarabedian. “It’s a profit-making machine and a movie studio’s dream.”

Lions Gate CEO Jon Feltheimer said the Wick films land in a

financial sweet spot for his studio and Hollywood at-large. On a recent

conference call with analysts, he said the sequel illustrates “the

sustainability of a film model that allows us to create breakout hits without

swinging for the fences.”

Read also:  Keanu Reeves will build a bike just for you

If stripped down, stylized fare is the bullseye of the movie

industry, Reeves is the movie-star of the moment. He’s far from his Johnny Utah

prime, but as such, he doesn’t require a Dwayne "Rock” Johnson sized

paycheck. What’s more, he’s still a household name.  the best parts of his

instrument are one full display in Wick: a simmering stoicism and one-liners

wooden enough to be both dark and funny.

“It’s a man of few words kicking ass and taking names—almost

like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator,” Dergarabedian said. “I

can’t think of another star that can pull this off the way Keanu Reeves does.”

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