Earlier in the year, Francis Lawrence, who directed the 2005 film “Constantine,” gave a promising update on the sequel and seemed to be hinting at an imminent and official announcement coming soon.
“I will say we are closer than ever to being able to do a sequel, which is a great thing,” Lawrence told Collider. “We got something really cool in the works,” he said before adding that he and star Keanu Reeves are “super, super excited about it.”
Then, a few months later, a worrying update. “Constantine” actor Peter Stormare revealed that there’s been "a lot of back and forth" and that Reeves "was not so happy with the scripts.” Stormare added that Keanu had envisioned the movie as being once again “about demons and regular people,” and that he was concerned that the script had strayed too far away from that core idea. It didn’t sound like the end result was what Reeves was looking for.
We now have a new update, and it sounds like Reeves is satisfied with the new draft.
Fingers crossed. Another draft of the script came in […] We're gonna take it to the studio and hopefully they like it too.
Akiva Goldsman wrote the script. Lawrence is supposed to come back to direct and, of course, Reeves will reprise the lead role. Also, JJ Abrams will be producing and is a creative consultant on the film.
Some of you may be wondering, Goldsman, Goldsman, where have I heard that name before? Oh, hey! That’s the guy who wrote “Batman & Robin”! Then again, five years later, he would go on to win an Adapted Screenplay Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind.” His screenplay for Ron Howard’s “Cinderella Man” was another rare W in his otherwise lukewarm filmography.
The “Constantine” source material was made popular in Alan Moore and Stephen R. Bissette's “Hellblazer” comics. In the 2005 film, Reeves starred as supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine, dying but sticking around to save his soul. “Constantine” grossed $280M worldwide and was met with very mixed reviews, but then it went on to build this massive following on home video and streaming. The result has been continuous fan demand for a sequel.
Do we really need a sequel? On paper, the first film shouldn’t have worked at all—yet, in its own oddball way, it did. Expecting lightning to strike twice feels like wishful thinking, but Warner Bros. sees a chance to cash in on a follow-up to a movie that didn’t even break even. And since this technically falls under the DC banner, James Gunn will have input if it actually moves ahead.