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Streaming service Peacock finally revealed the air dates for the highly anticipated John Wick spinoff at Comic Con. The Continental starts in September.
Enjoy your stay
It’s been a while in the making, but the John Wick prequel that sets up the titular establishment finally has a release date. We got as much this past weekend at SDCC, along with some teases of what fans can expect from the show, as well as its setting.
If you don’t know, The Continental reels back the decades to the 1970’s, and the very beginning of what’s the central hub and safe-zone for the Wick universe’s cadre of criminals and hitmen (and women). So it’s both the story the building itself and Winston Scott, its caretaker.
The three-part event will explore the origin behind the iconic hotel-for-assassins centerpiece of the John Wick universe through the eyes and actions of a young Winston Scott, as he’s dragged into the Hell-scape of 1970’s New York City to face a past he thought he’d left behind. Winston charts a deadly course through the hotel’s mysterious underworld in a harrowing attempt to seize the hotel where he will eventually take his future throne.
Peacock press release
The show will be effectively a mini-series event, and split its tale into three. In attendance at the Comic Con panel, director Albert Hughs will bookend and be in command of parts 1 and 3. He added quite a bit to the pre-release hype, including a bit about the opening scene…
“For the fans out there, we got you. Yes, we have longer form storytelling but if you set up something like that early with someone like Larnell (action director), you want to satiate the hardcore John Wick fans right away. Also casual fans that will come and go this is wild, what’s going on here…”
Albert Hughs
The look and feel of grimy 70s NYC
However bad you think New York City is today, it’s not as bad as it was in the 1970’s. The city was crime-ridden, dangerous, and literally burning in parts, so it’s the perfect setting from something like The Continental. Of course, much like the city the show takes place in, film-making back then wasn’t as slick as it is today either.
And that’s something that The Continental will play off of in some very interesting ways. It all starts with lenses.
“I’m gonna geek out a little bit. We found these old lenses at Panavision that haven’t been used in years and have been collecting dust. And so the lenses we shot the show shot “Doctor Zhivago”, “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Graduate”. We got these very antiquated lenses because today’s lenses are a bit too sharp and along with great production design, you can playfully do subtle things to convey this time period.”
Albert Hughs
So not only is the show going to look retro in its sets and characters, but it’ll actually look even grittier thanks to the hardware it’s filled with. How cool is that? Hughs also went on to say that fans should expect parts one and two to be “wild”, and part three to be “crazy”. What’s that mean? Well, likely, get ready for some completely insane, “John Wick”-level action.
And if you’re champing at the bit to check this bad boy out, you don’t have long to wait now. As you can see above, The Continental is set to debut on Peacock on September 22nd, 2023. From there, it’ll launch episode two on the 29th, and episode three on October 6th.
