By A year after the project was first announced, filmmaker Francis Lawrence offered an update on where things stand with the planned sequel to 2005 DC Vertigo comics adaptation “Constantine”.
The original film grossed over $200 million and starred Keanu Reeves as the chain-smoking supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine from the “Hellblazer” comics.
Reeves is expected back as star, Lawrence as director and Akiva Goldsman will write the screenplay. The last report on the film’s progress came from Goldsman a few months back whilst promoting the Apple series “The Crowded Room”.
At the time he said the trio had broken the story for the film but he hadn’t started writing it yet and was first scheduled to pen the “I Am Legend” sequel (Lawrence also directed that 2007 film) before he would get around to penning “Constantine 2”.
Lawrence, now out promoting “The Hunger Games” prequel which he directed, confirmed to Gamespot that the three of them are the ones currently in control of the character and securing those rights has now cleared much of the hold up on the movie:
“So Constantine 2 got obviously held up by the writer’s strike, and we had to jump through a bunch of hurdles to get control of the character again, because other people had control of the Vertigo stuff. We have control.
Keanu and Akiva Goldsman and I have been in meetings and have been hashing out what we think the story is going to be, and there’s more meetings of those that have to happen – the script has to be written – but really hoping that we get to do Constantine 2, and make a real rated R version of it.”
It’s expected the film will be an ‘Elseworlds’ title (ala Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” films) which is not connected to the larger DC Universe of Peter Safran and James Gunn.
Thus there could be another screen Constantine out at the same time and separate from Reeves – likely more akin to Matt Ryan’s more comics-esque take on the character in “Legends of Tomorrow”.
With the actor’s strike ongoing and Reeves likely to be in high demand when it’s over, it’s not clear when a sequel could arrive.
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