The second of three episodes of The Continental: From the World of John Wick is now streaming on Peacock.
Set in "the hell-scape of 1970s New York City," it was up to director Albert Hughes, as well as Wick franchise producers Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee and their production team, to recreate the bad old days of the Big Apple — very far from New York, no less.
One way of painting that landscape was through the music. The soundtrack is filled with hits from the era, from Heart to Gerry Rafferty to Pink Floyd. Hughes was the driving force behind it, and credits Peacock and Lionsgate with not pushing back, in spite of the hefty licensing fees.
Hughes explains to ABC Audio, "There was a certain budget for music at the beginning, and I go, like, 'Oh you guys, it's going to be three or four times that. There's no way.'" One big chunk of that budget went to getting Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here track "Welcome To The Machine" for episode two; Hughes notes it was the most expensive song in the series.
To their credit, Hughes says the studios were all in. "I saw the music as a replacement for Keanu Reeves because I don't have Keanu Reeves and a dead puppy," he jokes. "So I need another kind of actor, you know, in theory, a personality, and it was the music. And it also helps with time and place and nostalgia, all that other good stuff."