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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke May 3, 2024

Keanu Reeves didn’t reject a ‘woke’ movie offer from Marvel. It’s satire.

If Your Time is short

  • This story originated on a satire site. The Facebook account sharing it used U.S. News & World Report’s logo but is unaffiliated with the publication.

Affable actor Keanu Reeves stars in the "John Wick" movie series, with the latest movie out in 2023 and another expected in 2025.

Is he working on this franchise in lieu of another, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? 

A recent Facebook post from an account that misleadingly used U.S. News & World Report’s logo claims Reeves refused to work with Marvel, taking a stand against "wokeness." 

"Breaking," the May 1 post said. "Keanu Reeves Rejects Marvel’s $1.7 Billion ‘Woke’ Movie Offer, Says ‘Woke Mind Virus Should Be Destroyed.’"

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Featured Fact-check

The Facebook account — "U.S News" — is not affiliated with U.S. News & World Report. We found no story on the news outlet’s site about Reeves rejecting a Marvel movie over wokeness concerns. 

Two articles on the U.S. News site mention both Reeves and Marvel. One is about video games in 2023. The other, from 2014, refers to a DC Comics character who inspired a 2005 Reeves movie.

In the Facebook post’s comments, the U.S News account wrote "Keanu won’t ever go woke" and linked to a May 2 post on a website reiterating the Facebook post’s claims. 

But the same story appeared on another self-described satire site about a month earlier, on April Fool’s Day. Here, the story was clearly marked as "satire." 

We rate claims that Reeves rejected a "woke" movie offer from Marvel False.

 

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Keanu Reeves didn’t reject a ‘woke’ movie offer from Marvel. It’s satire.

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