J.J. Abrams-Helmed DC Project Scrapped by Max

Back in 2021, it was reported that a new live-action Constantine series was in the work for the then-HBO Max (now simply Max) from J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions, but now, that project is no more. According to Variety, the Constantine series has officially been scrapped by Max. According to their report, the series had been pretty far along in development with a lead actor in talks to take on the role and four scripts had been written for the contemporary London-set series.

Abrams' Constantine series had been expected to be part of a larger Justice League Dark universe for Max. However, earlier this year, the long-gestating Justice League Dark series was also scrapped, along with another Abrams project, Overlook, a spinoff of The Shining. As for the specific reason why the Constantine series was cancelled, that remains unclear, though most of DC's content now under the leader sup of DC Studios' co-CEOs Peter Safran and James Gunn as well as Constantine 2 moving forward with Keanu Reeves returning to take on the character, both of those factors may have played a significant role.

Constantine Director Recently Offered An Update On The Sequel

Director Francis Lawrence recently offered an update on the long-awaited Constantine sequel, saying that the writers' strike held things up, but the studio has landed the film rights so progress is being 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."

"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 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."

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