Constantine was released back in 2005, and while it received mostly negative reviews, it was a modest box office success. There were some big changes to the source material too, of course, but nothing too unforgiveable... well, aside from the loss of John Constantine's English accent!
Regardless, with Keanu Reeves more popular now than ever before thanks to the John Wick franchise, it's fair to say moviegoers would definitely consider checking out another Constantine adventure starring the actor. There were even claims recently that Warner Bros. could be considering bringing the actor back for a planned solo outing starring the Hellblazer character.
During a recent interview with Slash Film, director Francis Lawrence expressed an interest in making Constantine 2, and even indicated that he's spoken to Warner Bros., only to be told they have other plans.
"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," the filmmaker explains. "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," Lawrence concluded, "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."
That doesn't sound overly positive, and it's probably down to the studio's plans to introduce a new take on John Constantine in HBO Max's Justice League Dark before giving him a spinoff of his own.
What do you hope the future holds in store for Constantine?