Francis Lawrence and Keanu Reeves would love to still make Constantine 2!

July 16th 2020, 3:45pm

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

I personally harbor a soft spot for the oft-maligned 2005 CONSTANTINE film, starring Keanu Reeves and directed by Francis Lawrence (I AM LEGEND). It may have not been comics accurate when it came to its depiction of John Constantine from the DC/Vertigo HELLBLAZER series (where he was British and visually-based on Sting), but it definitely got the tone and demeanor of the sardonic and grim character down pat. It was also a lot of fun! It's almost a SHINING situation for me, where I like both the books and the movie equally, even if they don't really quite resemble each other.

Anyway, here is the official synopsis of that film:

Based on the DC/Vertigo "Hellblazer" comics, a suicide survivor and demon hunter John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) has literally been to hell and back — and he knows that when he dies, he's got a one-way ticket to Satan's realm unless he can earn enough goodwill to climb God's stairway to heaven. While helping policewoman Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) investigate her identical twin's apparent suicide, Constantine becomes caught up in a supernatural plot involving both demonic and angelic forces.

Meanwhile, Lawrence recently conducted an interview with /Film about the aforementioned film's 15th anniversary, and he revealed that there had been talks and interest for a sequel, with Reeves completely on board:

I think we all wanted to do it. It was successful enough. We wanted to make a responsible, more R-rated movie. By responsible, I mean we’d make a movie that wouldn’t cost quite as much as the original, which we thought was going to be PG-13. We worked on the sequel for a while. It was tricky to come up with where to take it. What I really liked about the first one was it was a really personal story, so I thought it’d be a mistake to get caught up in the supernatural gobblygook. The idea of a personal story was really interesting, and that was the hard thing to come across. We have been talking about it recently. It’s always stuck with all of us because we all love the movie, and especially realizing there’s a real cult following for this movie, it’d be fun to make. Keanu, Akiva, and I have actually talked about it. Unfortunately, I don’t even remember who has it, but with all these shared universes that exist now, with Constantine being a part of Vertigo, which is a part of DC, people have plans for these shared universes. You know, possibly different Constantines and things like that. Right now, we don’t have that character available to us for TV or movies, which is a bummer. We all investigated it, but I think it’s kind of crazy when you have Keanu, who would love to do another Constantine, and us wanting to do another Constantine, and people are like, “Uh, no, we got other plans.” We’ll see what happens.

Unfortunately, as the director said, with a recently announced reboot on the way, the possibility of a sequel is pretty much an impossibility at this point. But who knows? Apparently Michael Keaton is going to play Batman again, so anything is possible!

But what do you guys think? Would you like a sequel to the 2005 cult classic version of the character? Or would you prefer a new reboot? Either way, sound off below!