How Much Keanu Reeves Was Paid For All 4 John Wick Movies
Keanu Reeves has played John Wick in four movies, and though it’s a huge franchise, the actor’s salaries are a fraction of his Matrix paychecks.
SUMMARY
Keanu Reeves has made $22 million for playing John Wick, with the bulk of that being his $15 million salary for John Wick: Chapter 4.
Reeves’ salaries for the earlier John Wick movies ranged from $1-2 million to $2-2.5 million, showing a significant increase over time.
Reeves’ net worth is $386 million, largely due to negotiating high salaries and earning a percentage of gross profits for successful movies like The Matrix sequels.
John Wick has become one of the most successful action franchises, and as a result, Keanu Reeves has earned an eight-figure salary for his role as the Baba Yaga. The most recent release in the series was 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4, which seemingly definitively wrapped up the assassin’s story.
The movie was hugely ambitious with a $100 million budget, taking place in five countries, and being almost three hours long. This was a huge leap from the franchise’s humble beginnings, as the first 2014 film was a simply $20 million action flick that wasn’t even two hours.The driving force of the franchise and what has helped the John Wick series become so successful is Reeves’ starring role as the titular character.
As he has been known to do throughout his career, Reeves threw himself in at the deep end by doing most of his own stunts and learning multiple types of martial arts to get John Wick’s now signature gun-fu style down.
Between totally committing to the role and already being a bankable star, that was reflected in the iconic actor’s salaries. However, Reeves’ paychecks for the first John Wick movies are surprisingly relatively low.
Keanu Reeves Has Made $22 Million For Playing John Wick
Keanu Reeves has made roughly $22 million in total for playing John Wick, the bulk of which is from his $15 million John Wick: Chapter 4 salary. It’s a testament to how successful the John Wick franchise has become given that Reeves’ salary for John Wick: Chapter 4 is almost as much as the first movie’s $20 million budget. Reeves’ salary for each movie was:
$1-2 million for John Wick
$2-2.5 million for John Wick: Chapter 2
$2-2.5 million for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
$15 million for John Wick: Chapter 4
Those are the upfront salaries Reeves earned for each John Wick movie, but he could have negotiated a percentage of backend points too, which is a cut of the movies’ gross profits. This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, and it’s something that Reeves has negotiated for previous movies too.
That means that Reeves could have made considerably more than $22 million in total. This possibility is significantly more likely given that Reeves seemingly didn’t get a salary increase for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum despite John Wick: Chapter 2’s huge success.
Keanu Reeves hasn’t finished earning paychecks for playing John Wick, as the actor will reprise the role in 2024’s Ballerina, a John Wick spinoff starring Ana de Armas as the titular female assassin.
The movie takes place in the eight months between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4. It isn’t clear how large of a role Reeves will have in the spinoff, and it hasn’t been disclosed how much the actor is getting paid either, but it’s likely in the seven-figure range once again.
What Keanu Reeves’ Current Net Worth Is
Keanu Reeves’ net worth is $386 million, which is thanks to negotiating salaries that very few actors have ever been given. Reeves made $200 million for the Matrix sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, which was mostly thanks to earning a percentage of those movies’ gross profits.
However, the actor’s net worth would be way higher if it wasn’t for all of his charitable work. It was reported that Keanu Reeves gave away the bulk of the money he earned from the Matrix sequels to charity (via Mix Mag), and he even spent a lot of his own money on Rolexes for the John Wick stunt crew.
