For a decade, the John Wick films have treated the Impossible Task as a ghost story. In the original film it is a single line of menace, the job a retired hitman pulled off to buy his way out of the underworld, and the main films kept it offscreen. Lionsgate has now decided that the franchise’s most famous unseen event deserves a movie of its own, and that it should be drawn rather than shot, with Keanu Reeves voicing the assassin.

As Deadline first reported, Lionsgate confirmed Thursday that it has greenlit the animated feature and closed a deal for Reeves to reprise the role. The story goes back before the first film to follow Wick as he completes the Impossible Task, the job meant to free him from his obligation to the High Table and earn him a life with Helen, the wife whose death sets the original in motion. Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said in comments after the company’s quarterly earnings that the project is already in preproduction.

The creative team is a deliberate hybrid. Shannon Tindle directs, having made Netflix’s animated Ultraman: Rising and co-written the story of Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings. Ryan and Kaz Firpo, whose credits include Marvel’s Eternals, wrote the script. The live-action brain trust stays on as producers: Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, 87Eleven Entertainment’s Chad Stahelski and Reeves himself. Point Grey, the Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg company behind Sausage Party and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, joins them, bringing adult-skewing animation experience to a franchise built on practical stunt work.

Reeves is no stranger to voice work. He played the stuntman toy Duke Caboom in Pixar’s Toy Story 4 and Shadow in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. But this is the first feature to carry John Wick himself into animation, a medium where the 87Eleven stunt choreography that defined the series has to be rebuilt frame by frame.

The project has been on Lionsgate’s slate since Adam Fogelson, chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, unveiled it at CinemaCon in 2025. “There is no John Wick story fans are clamoring for more than the Impossible Task,” Fogelson said at the time. “Shannon’s take on that story is an incredible one, and we are beyond excited to see what John Wick can do in animation.” No release date has been announced.

Not every fan agrees the legend needs telling. Within hours of the announcement, one commenter under Deadline’s story wrote that the Impossible Task “should be left to the imagination.” Lionsgate is betting the opposite: that the line of dialogue which built the myth of the billion-dollar franchise can now carry a film of its own.

Tags: animation, ip-strategy, Keanu Reeves, Lionsgate, john wick, Chad Stahelski

Keanu Reeves voices John Wick’s Impossible Task as Lionsgate greenlights an animated prequel

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