John Wick VR shooter coming in 2016

By Will Fulton August 7, 2015

John Wick — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Lionsgate Films and Payday publisher Starbreeze announced that they have teamed up to develop a virtual reality first-person shooter based on the hit Keanu Reeves-led action film John Wick. The game is expected to launch on most commercial VR headsets in Spring 2016.

“We’re thrilled to partner with the best of the best in VR and game development with Starbreeze, WEVR, and Grab, who are collaborating with the movie’s producers to ensure an exciting, immersive and authentic virtual experience,” said Lionsgate President of Interactive Ventures & Games Peter Levin. “John Wick is the perfect cross-platform property to extend into the fast-growing gaming world, and we believe that a cutting edge VR game will deepen fan engagement and accelerate John Wick’s evolution into one of our next big action franchises.”

Development is being spearheaded by Grab Games, primarily a creator of mobile titles such as Hero Havoc and Gold Miner Go! and WEVR, the VR production studio responsible for the impressive theBlu: Encounter, a deep-sea demo which was used to show off the HTC Vive VR headset earlier this year. Starbreeze, the Stockholm-based developer and publisher behind the Payday series of heist games and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, will publish. Starbreeze and Lionsgate have already collaborated on a John Wick DLC character pack for Payday 2.

Few details about the game have been announced, but it will feature the characters and story of the John Wick film, centered around “the infamous Continental Hotel.” A preview of the game will be shown off as part of the HTC Vive World Tour this summer all around the United States and Europe. A demo will be available when the Vive launches later this year (it is not clear whether this is the same demo being shown as part of the tour) through SteamVR. The full game is then expected to launch in Spring 2016.

John Wick stars Keanu Reeves as a retired hit man who gets back into the game to exact revenge on some gangsters that screwed him. It was a surprise hit that we really enjoyed. A sequel is currently in development, indicating that it is already in the process of becoming a multimedia blockbuster franchise.

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Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

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