Constantine Director Teases Sequel Plans With Keanu Reeves

The live-action DC universe has gone into some pretty uncharted territory in recent months, between The CW’s multiverse-bending “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover, and news that Michael Keaton might return to the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in the upcoming The Flash movie. This has led to speculation among fans of what other iconic portrayals of DC characters could potentially return — including Keanu Reeves‘ cult-classic take on John Constantine. With a new Constantine movie reportedly in development, it remains to be seen if Reeves will end up starring in the picture — but it sounds like Constantine‘s original director would be willing to continue the story. In a recent interview with Slash Film, Constantine director Francis Lawrence spoke about his initial plans for a sequel, and how he would be willing to even revisit the idea today.

“I think we all wanted to do it. It was successful enough,” Lawrence explained. “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. It was tricky to come up with where to take it. What I really liked about the first one was it was a really personal story, so I thought it’d be a mistake to get caught up in the supernatural gobblygook. The idea of a personal story was really interesting, and that was the hard thing to come across.”

“We have been talking about it recently,” Lawrence continued. “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, Akiva, and I have actually talked about it.”

As Lawrence stressed, it certainly wouldn’t be impossible to bring back Reeves’ Constantine in the current DC multiverse, although he’s unclear if that will actually happen.

“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,” Lawrence added. “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.”

With a fifteenth-anniversary reunion panel for Constantine set to happen at next week’s Comic Con @ Home virtual convention, we’ll all have to wait and see what happens.

Would you want to see Keanu Reeves and Francis Lawrence return for another Constantine movie? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!