Keanu Reeves: ‘I haven’t been getting many offers from the studios… it sucks’

Here are some photos of Keanu Reeves at last night’s Hollywood screening of his new film, John Wick. I have to say… I think the photographers on the red carpet were in love with him. There are about a million close-up shots of just Keanu’s 50-year-old vampire face. Enjoy! Keanu is looking particularly great these days, so much so that any “would you hit it?” type of question is answered with a resounding “YES!” from every corner of the globe. But for whatever reason, Keanu isn’t getting major studio love these days. And I don’t know why? He has a stellar reputation for being a lovely guy to cast and crew alike. He works hard. He’s constantly underestimated. Keanu talked a little bit about studio films versus indies in a new interview with Indie Wire:

Indie Wire: You aren’t doing many studio movies these days. “John Wick” was produced independently and acquired later by Lionsgate. Do you have a preference for indies over studio projects?
Keanu: Not really. The last studio movie I did was “47 Ronin,” but before that it had been a long time — probably “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” So I haven’t been getting many offers from the studios.

IW: Are you OK with that?
Keanu: No, it sucks, but it’s just the way it is. You can have positive and negative experiences, but what I like about studios are the resources and the worlds that they can create. Obviously, a lot of good filmmakers work on studio movies. Even when I was working on studio movies more often, I was always doing independent movies. So for me, that was just not happening, but I want to keep going, making things, and telling stories. I want to be able to do that — to be an actor, a director, to produce, you know? If we’re going to do a delineation between studio and independent [films], I was always hoping to do both.

[From Indie Wire]

Part of me thinks that it’s interesting sociologically that Keanu is facing the same dilemma that many over-40 actresses face: he’s a movie star from a different era of Hollywood filmmaking and studios don’t want to pay a 50-year-old to be the lead anymore. He’s aged out of the current teenage-boy-audience-driven filmmaking. And unlike the other aging action stars – Bruce Willis, Arnold, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, etc – Keanu doesn’t have a major franchise to endlessly milk with neverending sequels. Huh. Keanu has more in common with Diane Lane than Bruce Willis.