Constantine Director Offers Update on Sequel, Teases R Rating

Come Hell or high water, Francis Lawrence is going to see Constantine 2 through to release. The filmmaker has expressed plenty of interest in filming the long-awaited sequel and now says the studio has once again landed the film rights to John Constantine, clearing the way for the film to be made.

"So Constantine 2 got obviously held up by the writers strike," Lawrence said in a new chat with GameSpot. "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."

The director has been increasingly candid in his desires to make the film a legitimate R-rated movie, saying the MPA only gave the first picture the rating because of its religious undertones.

"One of the biggest things for me about the first one was we followed, per Warner Bros., the rules to make a PG-13 movie in terms of violence, blood, language, sexuality. But the ratings board gave us a hard R based on their the gray zone of intensity," Lawrence told Collider last November. "And my big, big regret was that we have an R-rated movie that's really a PG-13 movie. And if I was going to have to go have an R, I would have really made an R-rated movie. I would have made it much scarier and much more violent and I would have really made an R-rated movie."

Should the movie get made, it'd also likely be a part of the new DC Elseworlds offering, existing in a continuity outside of the new DC Universe. Other films that will eventually receive the Elseworlds branding are Matt Reeves' The Batman: Part II and Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie a Deux.

Constantine is now streaming on Max. The sequel has yet to set a release date or release frame at DC Studios.