Lionsgate Debuts Explosive ‘Ballerina’ Fight (and Keanu Reeves Scene) at CinemaCon

The John Wick universe is revving up again.

Lionsgate kicked off its CinemaCon studio presentation with an extended look at the Len Wiseman and Ana de Armas collaboration Ballerina on Tuesday morning before welcoming the pair to the Colosseum stage. The director and the star chatted up the explosive action film, a spin-off of the blockbuster franchise starring Keanu Reeves, who appeared as John Wick in some of the footage that hit the big screen.

“This is by far the most physical and challenging thing I’ve ever done,” confirmed de Armas, a onetime CinemaCon Action Star of the Year. She said that her training spanned three to four months and included weapons, action and ballet training. De Armas said the sequences that required a mix of ballet flexibility and fighting proved to be “very creative and very fun to do.”

For his part, Wiseman said that he’s long been a fan of the series, particularly the cleverness and wit of the action. “In terms of what I bring to that kind of tone is I like to tease and trick the audience with the action,” said the veteran filmmaker. “By using and playing into the action tropes to just take the steering wheel and set it off course. One of the things that you can get from a really good action sequence is, ‘Holy shit, I did not expect that.’”

The CinemaCon audience responded very well to the footage that was shown, particularly a restaurant-set action sequence that finds de Armas’s character facing off with an assassin in an explosive fight that gets very physical. In another scene, Wick appears with a proposition: “You can still leave. You still have a choice.” She asks him why he didn’t leave, to which Wick answers, “I’m working on it.”

The footage followed a first-look trailer that debuted last September for a film that also includes Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, the late Lance Reddick, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Norman Reedus and Ian McShane. The script comes from Shay Hatten and Derek Kolstad.

The project has had a long road to the screen. It initially shot in 2022, and was scheduled to debut in theaters in June 2024, however last February, Lionsgate pushed the release to June 6, 2025. The extra time allowed John Wick guru Chad Stahelski to assist with upping the action working in tandem with helmer Wiseman on new sequences.

CinemaCon, the annual gathering of cinema owners and Hollywood studios, is hosted in Las Vegas by the newly rebranded Cinema United, which for decades was known as the National Association of Theatre Owners. This year’s edition runs from March 31 to April 3.