The Director of CONSTANTINE Talks About His Plans for the Sequel with Keanu Reeves, but WB Had Other Plans
Last week a report hit the internet that J.J. Abrams was going to produce a new Constantine movie that may or may not bring back Keanu Reeves to the role. Well, before this project came around, the director of the original film, Francis Lawrence, had plans for a sequel and pitched it to Warner Bros., but he was told that they have other plans.
During a recent interview with /Film, Lawrence talked about his plans for the sequel saying:
"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. 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 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."
I really enjoyed the first Constantine movie that was released. But at the time, the reviews that it got were mostly negative and the box office take was modest. Also, a lot of fans didn’t like changes to the source material. But I thought it was a blast!
The character will make his return one day, and it’ll be interesting to see what Abrams and his creative team are planning for the return. What do you hope the future holds in store for Constantine?