Constantine Director 'Hopeful' for Sequel After DC Studios Shakeup
· IGN
The director of Constantine, Francis Lawrence, opened up about the movie's long-awaited sequel now that DC Studios has had a changing of the guard.
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James Gunn and Peter Safran are out at DC Studios in a sudden and unexpected move that has sparked no end of worry and speculation among fans. Gunn, for his part, cited a distaste for the “corporate” side of the job, but confirmed that projects already in motion, like Man of Tomorrow, are still a-go.
Fans aren’t the only ones scratching their heads about what might happen next. Francis Lawrence, the director of oodles of Hollywood blockbusters, is also in this boat — though he’s rather optimistic about the situation, as it means he might finally get the chance to make another Constantine film.
Speaking with Collider ahead of his next movie, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Lawrence clarified that he isn’t happy for anyone to lose their jobs, but admitted that he’s keen on the possibility of getting Constantine 2 off the ground now that things are changing at DC.
"Well, I’ll tell you this,” he began. “Not that I want anybody to lose their jobs, so this is not like a schadenfreude kind of thing, but I will say that we’ve been trying to make Constantine 2 for twenty-something years, and we have an idea, and we have a script, and we’ve been wanting to make it, and the people that were at DC were an impediment to us making it.
“So, we are now more hopeful as of yesterday’s news that maybe now there will be another opportunity. But again, we’ve been trying to make this for twenty-something years, and there’s always been obstacles in the road to making it, and it’s not me, it’s not Keanu, it’s not Akiva. J.J. [Abrams] is on it, as well. We all want to do it. So, it’s really going to be people at Paramount, Warner, whoever’s running DC now, getting everybody on board to say, like, 'Hey, we can do a sequel of our version of Constantine?'"
Lawrence said, without a doubt, that this version of Constantine will be another R-Rated film, no matter what. He explained that the first movie had been made with a PG-13 rating in mind, but despite their best efforts, it was hit with an R label. If given the chance to make a sequel, Lawrence wants to lean all-in and make it a true R-rated experience.
“So, part of the idea from the very beginning was, because we followed all the rules to make a PG-13 movie and we got hit with an R, they told us, 'You can’t do anything about it. It’s going to be an R no matter what.' We tried to fight them on it, and they said, 'Nope. It’s an R,' but really, it’s an R-rated PG-13 movie, which pisses me off,” he explained.
"And so we all kind of came back and said, 'Okay, when we do this next time, we’re making the hard-R version of Constantine.' So when we do it, it’s going to be the hard-R version of Constantine."
Lawrence doubled down on his desire to make another Constantine at all costs, even saying that he doesn’t mind if it gets put into a shared universe or remade to fit DC’s ever-evolving plans at some point. He claimed that he and Keanu would even compromise on their financial compensation to get the film made, if that's what it takes.
"Personally, I don’t even care if somebody has a plan for some sort of shared universe, and they want to do another version of Constantine. If they just let us do the sequel to our version, they can coexist. So, I have renewed hope as of yesterday that there might be some possibility for forward movement there,” he said.
"We have to be responsible,” he continued, speaking about the financial side of the equation. “We want to make it. This is not the kind of movie that I would charge full freight and Keanu could charge full freight. It’s something we have to do, because we love and want to take a gamble on it, and do it responsibly. And so, we’ve been thinking about that same idea for 20 years, that we’re not going to do it for $100 million. We have to be scrappy about it."
Constantine was released in 2005. Starring Keanu Reeves, the movie is based on the DC/Vertigo comic book Hellblazer and follows supernatural detective John Constantine in his mission to purge the world of nefarious evil entities.
This is the latest news about Constantine after Reeves reportedly pitched a sequel to DC Studios in 2025. And just earlier this month, it was revealed that Evil Dead Wrath writer-director Francis Galluppi was hired by DC Studios to write a John Constantine movie for them, though it’s unclear if he’ll also be directing.