The team behind Constantine had plans for a sequel that never happened. That was one topic of conversation during the Constantine 15th anniversary panel during Comic-Con@Home. The panel featured star Keanu Reeves, director Francis Lawrence, and producer Akiva Goldsman. Goldsman sounded as if he’s still ready for another shot at Constantine 2. “Boy, we wanted to make a sequel,” he said during the panel. “We wanted to make a hard R sequel. We’d probably make it tomorrow… To the studios who made it, Warner Bros and Village Roadshow, it was always a little bit of a feathered fish; its oddness, equally comfortable in a character scene between Keanu and Rachel as it is with demons flying, hurling themselves at a man who lights his fist on fire and expels them. It’s odd, right? It’s not action-packed, it just has a bunch of action. This movie isn’t exactly a thing, it’s actually a few things. And those seem harder and harder to make.
“We’ve talked about it and we’ve had ideas, and I would love that, what if he woke up in a cell, he has to identify the prisoner? It was [screenwriter Frank Cabello’s] idea that [the prisoner] was Jesus. He comes up and he’s in New York. Yeah, we’ve talked about a sequel”
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“We talked about sequels more than the studio… It wasn’t a knockout success or critically acclaimed at the time,” Lawrence said. There was also the touchy subject matter. “Religion is a polarizing element in storytelling,” Lawrence said. “I remember being at a Q&A after a screening, and somebody, I don’t remember what religion he was, he was so confused by heaven and hell and trying to get me to explain. Because, in his world view, there was no heaven and hell. So, how was he supposed to enter this world appropriately, right? And that was one of the big takeaways. The subject matter of the story was just putting people off.”
Besides Reeves, Constantine also stars Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Djimon Hounsou, Gavin Rossdale, and Peter Stormare. The film earned $230.9 million when it debuted after receiving mostly negative reviews from critics.
There have recently been rumors that Reeves could return in a new Constantine project related to J.J. Abrams’ Justice League Dark. “I’ve always wanted to play John Constantine again,” Reeves said in an interview last year. “I just love that world, too, and I love that character. I just had a blast playing a character and [playing] in that world.”
