Atomic Blonde Director Discusses John Wick Crossover

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Director David Leitch has offered his thoughts on the prospect of a crossover between Charlize Theron’s Atomic Blonde and the John Wick franchise. Theron has certainly played an interesting variety of roles over the course of her two-decade career in Hollywood. First gaining major attention for playing Keanu Reeves’ doomed wife in 1997’s The Devil’s Advocate, Theron has also won an Oscar for playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster; portrayed icy corporate executive Meredith Vickers in Prometheus, and cracked wise with Seth McFarlane in A Million Days to Die in the West, among dozens of other roles.

In 2015, Theron cemented herself as a badass action star via the role of Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the most acclaimed films of that year. This weekend, Theron will continue her recent turn toward action with Leitch’s Atomic Blonde, which casts her as elite MI6 spy Lorraine Broughton. The packed cast also features James McAvoy as an ally of Lorraine’s, John Goodman as a CIA agent, Mummy star Sofia Boutella as a French spy, and IT‘s future Pennywise the Clown actor Bill Skarsgard in a small supporting role.

Atomic Blonde represents Leitch’s first solo directorial effort, after co-directing the first John Wick film with Chad Stahelski. Leitch didn’t return for John Wick: Chapter 2, but remains involved with that franchise as an executive producer. During a chat with SR, Leitch was asked about the possibility of eventually crossing over Theron’s titular Atomic Blonde with Reeves’ formerly retired assassin Wick. Here’s what he had to say:

“(Laugh) It would be great! I get this question once in a while, and I think it’s just more their time period lines. I would absolutely do it. Maybe there’s a time we see versions, or there’s uh, you know, the other real fantasy is that maybe there’s a project with both, that a new idea. You know, that Charlize and Keanu could…, a story that we could have with the same action space and we can see them either partner up or go toe to toe.”

While Atomic Blonde and John Wick have different distributors, they both count 87eleven – co-founded by Stahelski and Leitch – as a production company, so it’s not necessarily hard to imagine a scenario where the two characters are combined. Of course, as alluded to by Leitch, one creative stumbling block might be that Atomic Blonde is set in 1989, near the end of the Cold War and the ensuing fall of the Soviet Union. Wick’s adventures appear to take place in present day, albeit clearly within a world that’s not quite conventional reality.

Despite his perpetually youthful appearance though, Reeves is 11 years older than Theron, so it’s possible a scenario could be invented where a mid to late 20s Wick was early into his career as an assassin in the time period that Atomic Blonde operates in, facilitating a crossover of the two characters. Of course, steps would need to be taken to make Reeves look noticeably younger. That’s just one idea though, and one assumes that if Leitch and Stahelski really wanted to make it happen creatively, they could. At that point it would be more a question of getting the former Devil’s Advocate co-stars to sign on the dotted line.