Six months ago came word that actor Keanu Reeves and director Francis Lawrence were re-teaming for a sequel to 2005’s DC Comics adaptation “Constantine” at Warner Bros. Pictures.
Reeves starred as the chain-smoking supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine from the “Hellblazer” comics who attempts to help a woman (Rachel Weisz) and gets caught up in the battle between heaven and hell.
Akiva Goldsman is returning to write the screenplay whilst J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella will produce. The last report on the film came back in late January, the day before James Gunn and Peter Safran announced their new DC slate of projects.
At that time Reeves indicated they had only just gotten the go-ahead, and so development of the project had only just begun. Then of course came the DC Studios slate reveal and everything changed (“Hellblazer” is published under the DC imprint Vertigo).
Now, out promoting “John Wick: Chapter 4,” Reeves indicates that the project’s progress is in limbo right now as the film is being “re-evaluated” by DC Studios but tells Collider he’s hopeful it will move forward: “DC world [is] re-evaluating whether or not they want to do a Constantine with me in the movie… So fingers crossed.”
Lawrence meanwhile has been busy with “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” prequel and also has the “BioShock” film adaptation on his development slate. He offers his own update to the outlet, telling them there are difficulties with a “Constantine” sequel due to rights issues:
“It’s something that we’ve been talking about since we made Constantine because we all loved it. So we’ve been talking about it, talking about it, talking about it. All the DC [properties], because Vertigo is part of DC, that sort of like the control of those properties got complicated with Warner Bros. with DC, with JJ [Abrams]’s deal, you know, all those kinds of things. There’s a lot of complicating factors. So it was never Akiva, and Keanu, and I happen to be sort of convinced to do it. It was really trying to figure out how we can get some sort of control over the Constantine character again.”
As of last month, Warner Bros. confirmed that plans for a “Constantine” sequel were still moving ahead with the project likely to be one of Gunn and Safran’s ‘Elseworlds’ title (like “The Batman Part II” and “Joker Folie a Deux”. No dates have been set.
