Keanu Reeves shows Hollywood how to make money

"John Wick: Chapter 2," the latest vehicle for the 1990s heartthrob, garnered an estimated $30 million in domestic ticket sales in its first weekend. That's more than double the amount raked in by the first film, and the fourth best debut of the year. (The movie took in an additional $10.6 million in international markets.)

Reeves, one of the most volatile assets in Hollywood, isn't known as the best of actors, and has certainly had some stinkers over the years. For every Matrix, there's a Johnny Mnemonic, for every Speed, a Sweet November. Most recently, Reeves headlined 47 Ronin, an opulent martial arts spectacle that flopped about as hard as a movie can.

In short, Reeves is a genuine movie star, but a streaky one. Of his major films, the correlation between box-office revenue and critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews, is an anemic .5. Which is to say, some of his most lucrative movies are also some of his most panned projects.

However, Reeves finally appears to have found his groove. The two John Wick films are among the most-praised pieces of his career. To be sure, there isn't much to these movies: The special effects are minimal and the plot spartan: a slighted thug kills someone's dog and steals his car … the wrong someone, it turns out.

The action, however, is constant. The cinematography is sharp, and the stunts are sublime. If "The Avengers" is the action film equivalent of a poetry slam, the Wick films are haiku. They are everything a would-be blockbuster like "47 Ronin" is not. Most importantly, they weren't that expensive to make-the Hollywood equivalent of a value stock.

Lions Gate Entertainment picked up distribution rights for the first Wick film just 11 weeks before its debut. With a slight marketing nudge, it became a very profitable asset, garnering a respectable $44 million in domestic theaters before making a particularly strong run on digital streaming platforms.

"You think 'What's the big franchise that comes after Hunger Games and Divergent?' Guess what, it's John Wick," said comScore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. "It's a profit-making machine and a movie studio's dream."

Lions Gate CEO Jon Feltheimer said the Wick films land in a financial sweet spot for his studio and Hollywood at-large. On a recent conference call with analysts, he said the sequel illustrates "the sustainability of a film model that allows us to create breakout hits without swinging for the fences."

If stripped down, stylized fare is the bullseye of the movie industry, Reeves is the movie-star of the moment. He's far from his Johnny Utah prime, but as such, he doesn't require a Dwayne "Rock" Johnson sized paycheck. What's more, he's still a household name. the best parts of his instrument are one full display in Wick: a simmering stoicism and one-liners wooden enough to be both dark and funny.