New Ballerina Footage Highlights Franchise’s Fierce Energy

As we inch ever closer to the release of the upcoming John Wick spin-off, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, Lionsgate has released a final trailer for the Ana de Armas-starring film.

Premiering on June 6, 2025, Ballerina was initially slated to reach theaters back in December of 2024, but was bumped up during post-production in order to give the filmmakers time to perfect their choreography. With new cinema scraps having dropped in March as part of the film’s formal rollout, this trailer offers fans of the long-running action franchise their last glimpse at what to expect when Ballerina opens this June.

Set sometime during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Ballerina follows the exploits of a group of elite, ballerina-assassin recruits led by the ruthless and elusive Director. In the 2019 film, Keanu Reeves’ titular character escaped across New York City to the headquarters of the Ruska Roma criminal organization, where the “excommunicado” assassin found shelter and a grueling training regimen that would serve him shortly. The cast of Ballerina includes many of the familiar faces from that film, with Ana de Armas starring as Eve Macarro, the mysterious young ballerina from Parabellum.

Eve was briefly seen rehearsing on stage in a scene that quickly segued back to Keanu Reeves’ John Wick. But this time, it’s Eve’s turn in the spotlight, as she takes center stage on the screen in the lead-up to Ballerina’s release. The Ana de Armas-starring spin-off features some other returning faces, including Huston as the Director and Ian McShane as the Continental’s manager, Winston. Longtime fans of the franchise will be sad to know that Lance Reddick, who passed away in March 2023, makes one last appearance in the film as the Continental’s ever-efficient concierge, Charon.

Ballerina’s main cast also features new faces, with Gabriel Byrne as the Chancellor (the villain in the film), Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Eve’s mentor Nogi, and Norman Reedus as Daniel Pine. Catalina Sandino Moreno and David Castañeda are in the cast too, but fans will have to wait to see what characters they’re playing.

A Revenge Story Worthy of the Wick Legacy

Ballarina‘s first trailer was released back in September of 2024. The first look at Ana de Armas in the lead role focused on Eve’s backstory, a Russian orphan who rose through the ranks of the Ruska Roma to train as one of the Director’s ballerina-assassins. Her goal was to avenge her father, whom she saw killed by gun-toting assassins, but this initial glimpse into her life offered very little context for what her story was all about or why Ballerina had been given the green light in the first place.

However, fans got a bit more of what they wanted in the second trailer, a 2025 follow-up that went all-out on its artfully composed snowy showdown between Ana de Armas’ Eve and Reeves’ John Wick. As Wick tracks Eve down to her ballet studio hideout, the dance troupe performs an intense and thematic take on a well-known Chopin piece to the sound of Reeves being gunned down by unseen hitmen.

Of course, it isn’t long until John Wick finds Eve. The two stand off in a familiar John Wick fashion before being ushered off-screen by menacing, black-clad assassins. While the on-screen pairing of Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas may be the main draw here, the second trailer keeps fans guessing about how large a role John Wick will play in Ballerina, or how long these two will be seen together, that matter.

In the latest final trailer, there’s a bit more Wick. The three-minute film kicks off with a close-up on Ana de Armas’ assassin, Eve, as Keanu Reeves looks on through his gun’s scope. As he glares back at the ballerina, she quickly turns and readies her own weapon, spurring a massive, game-of-cat-and-mouse sequence as she runs through narrow hallways, flips down from rooftops, ducks into rooms, and jumps out windows. As hinted in previous trailers, Ana de Armas will be doing her own stunts in the film.

As she moves from room to room, dispatching guards with slick efficiency, Ana de Armas and Ballerina find their voice. The franchise has always built on the simple tenets of Keanu Reeves’ relentless thirst for revenge. But what Ballerina offers now is a fresh, raw look into the woman, not the assassin. “This isn’t done until they’re dead,” the trailer echoes at one point. It is a reminder of the unwavering, brutal streak that leads every John Wick movie. The difference this time is that the series is now building the story around a new lead who takes up Wick’s mantle in the same, dire world he had called home for more than a decade now.

Ana de Armas is joined by Reeves and his character John Wick during the climax of Ballerina, which takes a thematic dip into Parabellum while paving its own forward. The sequence promises a real shakeup to the Wick world. The fantasy style of violence has carried over, and the presentation is as strong as ever, with each death played out in painful, drawn-out choreography. As Ballerina enters theaters on June 6, 2025, it is clear that Ana de Armas has found a place in which to push herself, outside of her usual fare, with a franchise known for blending extreme, balletic violence with unique world-building and character development.