Rina Sawayama is set to return to her role in the John Wick universe as part of the new spinoff film Caine.
The singer made her feature film debut in 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4 as Shimazu Akira, the concierge at the Osaka Continental Hotel and the daughter of Hiroyuki Sanada’s Shimazu Koji, who is the hotel manager and a friend of Keanu Reeves’ lead character.
Now, Variety has reported that Sawayama will be playing Akira again in an upcoming spinoff film that will revolve around Donnie Yen’s Caine, a blind assassin and former friend of Wick’s who is coerced into returning to action in the fourth film to kill Wick in order to save his daughter.
The spinoff film will also be directed by Yen while regular John Wick director Chad Stahelski will be producing. The film is set to go into production later this year.
Speaking about Sawayama’s return to the franchise, Stahelski has said: “Rina is such a badass. I love what she did with this role in Chapter 4 and can’t wait to see her cross paths with Caine once again.”
Yen added: “Most delighted to welcome Rina back into this new exciting journey with us. It will be my pleasure and attempt to elevate her amazing character that left us mesmerised from John Wick: Chapter 4!”
Another John Wick spinoff film From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina is due to hit cinemas on June 6. Set between the third and fourth John Wick films, it stars Ana De Armas (Blonde, No Time To Die) as an assassin that sets out to exact revenge for her father’s death.
In 2023, Stahelski told NME that he contacted Sawayama for her role in Chapter 4 after seeing her music videos. “I knew very little about her beforehand,” the director said. “I was exposed to her as we were casting the role of Akira.
“We’d seen her music videos and just something about her look and something about her performances in her music videos was… she seemed right out of an anime, and Japanese anime is a big influence for this.”
The director explained that he then got the singer on a Zoom call “24 hours after I’d seen her video” and invited her to fly over to Berlin.
“She flew over, met Keanu, met myself, and her enthusiasm and professionalism… She was just great and she asked a lot of questions. We put her with the stunt team. Again, her enthusiasm just nailed it. We knew we had the right person.”
Along with starring in the film, Sawayama contributed a song to the soundtrack titled ‘Eye For An Eye’.
Speaking to NME in September about landing the role, Sawayama said: “My team are all just so shook by the idea that we even got offered John Wick, so I think… none of us really know what’s gonna happen. We’re just like, ‘What does happen to people in movies?’”
In a four-star review of the film, NME wrote: “Chapter 4 doesn’t exude the wheel-spinning cynicism of a forever franchise. Stahelski may traffic in excess, but at least he understands it: how choreography, performance and style can make over-the-top spectacle cohere into pleasurably overwhelming action fizz, rather than congealing into a sweaty special effects overload. He also gets that after 169 minutes, some degree of closure is appreciated.”
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