Although the producers are unlikely to regret that they decided to follow the lead of their star.
When creating a movie, there are always some changes that are made directly during the workflow. As one of the scriptwriters of the “John Wick” franchise Derek Colstad told in an interview with the ComicBook portal, initially the first film about John Wick was supposed to be called Scorn (which can be translated as “Contempt” or “Taunt”), but under the influence of Keanu Reeves the studio decided to change its initial plans and put in the title the name of the protagonist. Kolstad explained:
The only reason the film got its current name is because Keanu kept saying, “John Wick.” Our marketers at one point said: “Dude, so far between four and five million dollars have already been invested in an advertising campaign, so this is John Wick, not Scorn.” I can’t imagine now that our franchise would be known as Scorn.
Kolstad added that the forthcoming fourth film from the series has not yet received an official title. Most likely, the decision on this issue will be made by the director Chad Stahelsky, who before that came up with the title for the third part – “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum”. Initially, the release of “John Wick 4” was scheduled for May next year, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the prime minister was postponed to 2022.