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 have something really cool in the works,” he said before adding that he and star Keanu Reeves are “super, super excited about it.”
Last we heard, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman had put the finishing touches on 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.
Now, here’s the bad news. There’s been an update on “Constantine 2,” and it’s not good. In fact, I wonder if they’ll be able to get past this problem.
In an interview with The Direct, “Constantine” actor Peter Stormare revealed that there’s been "a lot of back and forth" so far and that Reeves "is not so happy with the scripts.”
Stormare added that Keanu had envisioned the movie as being once again “about demons and regular people,” and he’s concerned that the script has strayed too far away from that core idea.
It's a lot of back and forth, because... I think Keanu [Reeves], which I know pretty good, is not so happy with the scripts […] But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes […] I think from Keanu, he wants to do a sequel that is very close to the first one.
Akiva Goldsman had been tasked with writing the script, and it doesn’t sound like the end result is what Reeves was looking for. Heavy rewrites will have to be conducted now.
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 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.
Does a sequel really need to get made? On-paper, the original wasn’t supposed to work as a film, but somehow, in its own looney way, it did work, and is now considered —by some— as a cult classic. Believing that creative lightning could strike twice is a bit of a stretch.