LionsgateA new clip from the upcoming John Wick movie shows the dog-loving hit man sending his furry friend off to safety.
There’s now less than a month to go before the third instalment of the franchise hits the big screen, and today Lionsgate raised the hype by treating fans to an early viewing of one particular scene from John Wick 3: Parabellum.
The snippet of footage shows our blood-covered main man getting out of the rain and into a yellow taxi, with his lovely brown pit bull by his side.
He asks to go to the New York Public Library, but apparently the traffic isn’t working in favour of his tight schedule.
Check out the clip here:
When faced with the busy city roads, Wick offers his taxi driver one of his gold coins; the untraceable currency used in the underworld.
The assassin instructs the driver to take the dog to The Continental Hotel and hand him over to the concierge, who will hopefully keep the pooch safe while his owner is, no doubt, getting into all sorts of action-filled altercations.
Wick then tells the dog to ‘get down’, a command it promptly ignores, before saying ‘good dog’. He might love the animals, but the clip doesn’t exactly make Wick look like the best dog trainer in the world.
LionsgateJohn Wick 3 promises to be full of four-legged stars, with Wick’s pitbull joined by two Belgian Malinois who belong to the hit man’s new accomplice Sofia, played by Halle Berry.
In an interview with Collider, Parabellum director Chad Stahelski explained how the dogs in the film weren’t simply plucked off the street – there was actually a lengthy audition process to make sure they found the perfect canines to perform the action scenes, and a trainer willing to teach them the ropes.
He explained:
When you see a dog attack on screen or in a film, the dog doesn’t know it’s a movie. It’s an animal attacking a human in the mentality of ‘I’m gonna bite and chew this person up.’
So we wanted to find a trainer who was willing to take younger or adolescent animals or puppies and train them so that…the interaction with the stunt people was fun. It was a game. It wasn’t life or death, it wasn’t an animal protection [sic] himself or anything like that.
LionsgateStahelski continued:
Lo and behold, we were able to find someone who was willing to go through that. We found these beautiful animals, five Belgian Malinois dogs, five Belgian shepherds, that all had above average intelligence and physical abilities.
We actually had dog auditions for a couple months. Found them from all around the United States, brought them to Los Angeles, and for five months trained the dogs to do interactive stunts with stuntmen.
The pups have certainly had their work cut out for them, it will be great to see more scenes of them in action in the film!
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is set for release on May 17.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.