Ladies and gentlemen, the light-footed, puppy-lovin', bullet chewin' assassin, John Wick, is back in theaters, and he's coming to put some hurt on the Hollywood box office.
Lionsgate's JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM secured $5.9 million during its Thursday night preview screenings, making the Chad Stahelski-directed sequel the best launch for a film in the Keanu Reeves-led action franchise. Back in October of 2014, Stahelski's original JOHN WICK previewed to $950,000 while JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 earned $2.2 million in 2017 for its Thursday night screenings.
As of this moment, box office bloodhounds have JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM methodically stalking a $50 million domestic payday across 3,850 theaters. For those of you keeping score at home, Reeves' latest turn as the affable assassin stands to rise above Marvel's AVENGERS: ENDGAME this coming weekend, which is estimated to mop up another $30 million in Disney dollars on its way toward becoming the highest-grossing film of all time – a title currently held by James Cameron's visually splendiferous AVATAR.
I'll be adding to JOHN WICK's Friday box office later this evening, alongside my wife and two of our closest friends. We've even reserved D-Box seats, the kind that rumble, pitch, and buck as you experience the action on screen. I've seen plenty of films in this format, and I can't wait to feel how the D-Box programmers have managed to sync the chair's movements to so many gunshots fired all at once. Oh, and that horse riding scene, too! Yee-haw!
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM picks up with Reeves' character on the run after killing a member of the international assassin's guild. With a $14 million price tag on his head, Wick is the target of hit men and women everywhere. Starring alongside Reeves for the franchise's third chapter are Ian McShane, Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Tobias Segal, Anjelica Huston, Said Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn, and Jason Mantzoukas, among others.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM is in theaters now.