Fortnite has an official John Wick skin, but before it arrived, Keanu Reeves seemed to be in the game in the form of a Season 3 battle pass skin called the Reaper. The Reaper wasnât officially Reeves or his action movie character, but it looked a lot like him. During todayâs E3 Coliseum, Epic creative director Donald Mustard said the resemblance wasnât intentional.
Mustard took the stage today with Geoff Keighley and Chad Stahelski, the director of the movie John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum. The panel, titled âStorytelling Across Screens,â was in part about Epic bringing John Wick to Fortnite through an official skin and a John Wick-themed limited-time mode, Wickâs Bounty. Stahelski said the Epic team approached him after John Wick 2, looking for a collaboration. Mustard followed up to say that the Reaperâs resemblance to Keanu Reeves was not only unintentional, but took Reeves by surprise.
Mustard explained:
I happened to end up in a spot where Keanu and I were together, talking about some stuff, and we were like âWhat if, what if this kinda made sense?â And [Keanu] was into it, especially because we have this character in Fortnite called The Reaper which kindaâit wasnât intentional! For me, we were just trying to, like, letâs just make this super awesome The Man In Black. But [Keanu] was starting to have all these kids come up to him, all these teenagers on the street, and they werenât doing the normal âOh youâre Neo, oh youâre Wick.â They were doing, âFortnite guy! Fortnite guy!â [Keanu]âs like âWhat is this Fortnite thing?â And then of course heâs like, âThat doesnât look like me, thatâs not me,â and heâs like, âWe gotta do it right.â So I think thatâs when we [gestures to Stahelski] met…It just felt inevitable and made a lot of sense that we would do something together.
Iâll be honest: I donât know if I buy it, but I do want to know more about why Keanu Reeves and Donald Mustard were hanging out. You can watch the explanation (and the rest of the panel) in the video below.
