‘When You Watch the Movies, They’re Kind of Like Video Games’ — John Wick Game Dev Teases a Younger Keanu Reeves

Earlier in 2026, we got our first look at Saber Interactive’s currently Untitled John Wick Game at a Sony State of Play. But apart from an impressively cinematic trailer, very little is known about the upcoming project. Well, IGN recently spoke with Saber’s Chief Creative Officer, Tim Willits, and squeezed a few extra tiny details out.

A John Wick game seems like a no-brainer. In theory, it’s gun-fu action, which is not overly dissimilar from Remedy’s Max Payne bullet-time combat or Sifu’s hand-to-hand melee combos — the former has already received a movie adaptation, with the latter in production at Netflix from, incidentally, John Wick’s Chad Stahelski. So, the Keanu Reeves-led movie series making its way into video games seems a natural reversal of the adaptation process.

It’s a sentiment shared by Willits. “The great thing about the Wick series is when you watch the movies, they’re kind of like video games. You have a group of enemies, then you have some tough guys, and you have a boss fight, and then you have a group of enemies, tough guys, and a boss fight. So it’s really exciting to bring that action to a video game. It’s going to be like watching a movie. That’s all I can say.”

While the structure of the game remains unknown, we can infer that this will perhaps be a level-based action game in the mold of classics like the aforementioned Max Payne, if the flow of grunts, brutes, and bosses that Willits mentioned is as suggested. What we do know, however, is when the game will be set, and, in turn, how its place on the John Wick timeline may impact its style of gameplay.

“So yes, it’s before movie one,” Willits confirms. “And you can kind of infer that because [in the reveal trailer] he’s getting measured for his suit, and he looks a little bit younger.”

Because this John Wick is a prequel, Saber’s intention is for fights to be a little bit more clumsy than what fans have seen on the big screen, and the combat is more instinctual. This would, in theory, give the game a nice sense of progression, as we presumably gain experience and unlock skills on our way to becoming the much-feared Baba Yaga figure inhabited by Keanu Reeves’ assassin in the first movie. It also, crucially, means he isn’t fuelled by the murder of his beloved dog, so, thankfully, we won’t have to go through that trauma all over again.

We’ll learn plenty more about the Untitled John Wick game as we creep closer to its release, but Willits is very excited about getting it in players’ hands, claiming it’s “Saber’s biggest announcement we’ve ever done.”

For a developer now highly adept in adapting existing IP into games, that’s no small claim, with the highly successful Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and Evil Dead: The Game under the studio’s belt, as well as the upcoming John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, Jurassic Park: Survival, and Hellraiser: Revival.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.