Posted in: Movies | Tagged: Ballerina, entertianment, film, HRL, john wick, lionsgate, Shay Hatten

Lionsgate Grabs Script For 'Ballerina' As Potential John Wick Spinoff

Published Wed, 26 Jul 2017 12:20:59 -0500

A potential female-led John Wick spinoff is in the works from Basil Iwanyk. Lionsgate has won a bidding war for a script titled Ballerina, which will be produced by Iwanyk's Thunder Road banner.

The script is the first sale for 23-year-old writer Shay Hatten, who according to THR.com, idolizes Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) and is a writer's assistant at Team Downey, Robert Downey Jr.'s production company. Hatten wrote the black comedy script Maximum King!, which got his representation and ended up on the Black List (The best unproduced scripts of the year.)

Ballerina has been described as a cross between Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita and a Quentin Tarantino film. Though little is know of the actual plot, but it's said to be about a young woman raised as an assassin who must hunt down the other assassins that killer her family. No word if they also killed her dog.

The script went out last week and was being fought over by Warner Bros., Universal and Lionsgate, with the latter seeing it as a potential tie-in with the John Wick franchise, which has a third film in the works already.

The script was likely picked up so quickly due to the help of more than just the success of the first two John Wick films, but also the success of Wonder Woman and the buzz going for Atomic Blonde.

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