1 YEAR LATER, BOB ODENKIRK’S NOBODY 2, JOHN WICK REPLACEMENT SEQUEL, IS A GLOBAL STREAMING HIT

Nobody can replace John Wick. Admittedly, that sentence is a bit of a Rorschach test because depending on your stance, you either agree that nobody can replace John Wick, or you disagree and believe Nobody can replace John Wick.

All jokes aside, anybody who enjoyed the original sleeper hit when it landed in 2021, starring Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) as Hutch, knows such humor does indeed have a place in the franchise; and one can effectively call it a franchise now, seeing as it birthed a sequel — Nobody 2 — that found its way to box offices in August 2025.

And while some viewed the follow-up as a box office flop, in actuality, it made money, pulling in a modest $41 million, sure, but on a $21 million budget. It was never designed to take the world by storm like Wick did, but it garnered a cult following that helped push the film into the top five on Prime Video exiting the first week of February.

“The sequel’s funnier,” Odenkirk told Variety. “It’s got jokes within the fight. The first one is very earnest or grim, because I felt like, if I’m going to go into this thing, I’m either going to deeply embarrass myself in front of all my friends, or I’m going to pull it off, and then that’s going to blow my friends’ minds, because they’re going to go, ‘Holy shit, he really did do it.’

“Obviously you risk looking really stupid, whereas if you do a joke in the fight, then you can go, ‘Hey, I was just kidding. I never meant for you to take it seriously anyways.'”

Nobody Is Definitely a Somebody for Action-Comedy Fans

The original Nobody was a great watch, and a surprisingly brutal one, at that. It did effectively set the tone for establishing that Odenkirk could kick ass, often portrayed in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as the anxiety-drenched attorney who, on many occasions, pleaded for his well-being.

But when it came time to begin production for Nobody 2, Odenkirk leaned a bit more into his actual personality, though not his usual physical build — doing what he could to transform himself back into the somewhat convincing secret mercenary and kicker of asses.

“I was trying to turn a comedy writer’s body into an action hero’s body,” he said. “I laughed a lot, but it was not a fun laugh. It was an embarrassed kind of red-faced laugh.”

To put it plainly, nobody (ah) will ever confuse Nobody 2 for any of the John Wick films, or others in the same space, such as Jason Bourne, and Odenkirk readily admits that’s not the mission anyhow. He sought to give it a life and aura of its own, even when it came down to where Nobody 2 was filmed, even to the chagrin of his real-life wife.

“On page one, Hutch is in a gondola and he throws a tarp back, and there’s a whole passel of guns and explosives,” Odenkirk said of the script. “My real wife, Naomi, looked at me and she said, ‘Wow, this is cool. We get to go to Italy and shoot.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, could be fun.’

“And then about three days later, I go, ‘You know what? That’s not what we’re doing. Jason Bourne goes to Italy. James Bond goes to Italy. Hutch doesn’t get to go to Italy, and neither does Bob Odenkirk.'”

Where Hutch and Bob Odenkrik have gone, however, is to the top of the streaming charts, earning its 88 percent audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes over and over again.

2026-02-07T12:11:38Z