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To the joy of many, Warner Bros. started developing a sequel to Constantine in 2022, with Keanu Reeves and director Francis Lawrence set to return. Akiva Goldsman was writing it, and J.J. Abrams was among the producers. When Lawrence talked to Collider in 2025, he said they were closer than ever to making it. Now, after a major shake-up at DC Studios, Lawrence has a massive update on what fans can expect from Constantine 2.
The people making the calls at DC are about to change. On November 9, Skydance announced that James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as co-heads of DC Studios. Jeremy Latcham, who worked with Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy, takes over as president and chief creative officer on December 1. Speaking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Lawrence said the leadership change could give Constantine 2 the breathing room it needs to actually happen. When Weintraub asked if the movie was more likely to happen now, Lawrence pointed to the people who’d been running DC, explaining:
"Well, I’ll tell you this. Not that I want anybody to lose their jobs, so this is not like a schadenfreude kind of thing, but I will say that we’ve been trying to make Constantine 2 for 20-something years, and we have an idea, and we have a script, and we’ve been wanting to make it, and the people that were at DC were an impediment to us making it. So, we are now more hopeful as of yesterday’s news that maybe now there will be another opportunity. But again, we’ve been trying to make this for 20-something years, and there’s always been obstacles in the road to making it, and it’s not me, it’s not Keanu, it’s not Akiva. J.J. [Abrams] is on it, as well. We all want to do it. So, it’s really going to be people at Paramount, Warner, whoever’s running DC now, getting everybody on board to say, like, 'Hey, we can do a sequel of our version of Constantine.'"
Lawrence also brought up the possibility that DC might want a different John Constantine for its shared universe, but notes that wouldn't prevent him from wanting to make the Reeves-led sequel anyway. "Personally, I don’t even care if somebody has a plan for some sort of shared universe, and they want to do another version of Constantine," said Lawrence. "If they just let us do the sequel to our version, they can coexist. So, I have renewed hope as of yesterday that there might be some possibility for forward movement there."
Francis Lawrence Wants To Make a Hard-R ‘Constantine 2’
The first Constantine already carries an R rating, but what bothers Lawrence to this day is that he made it expecting a PG-13. "So, part of the idea from the very beginning was because we followed all the rules to make a PG-13 movie, and we got hit with an R," explained Lawrence. "They told us, 'You can’t do anything about it. It’s going to be an R no matter what.' We tried to fight them on it, and they said, 'Nope. It’s an R,' but really, it’s an R-rated PG-13 movie, which pisses me off." That experience settled one question early on about the kind of sequel they wanted to make: "And so we all kind of came back and said, 'Okay, when we do this next time, we’re making the hard-R version of Constantine.' So when we do it, it’s going to be the hard-R version of Constantine."
When Weintraub brought up the budget and how they wouldn't be able to spend a ton of money to make the sequel, Lawrence brought up his and Reeves’ usual fees as an example of where they’d have to make some sacrifices:
"We have to be responsible. We want to make it. This is not the kind of movie that I would charge full freight and Keanu could charge full freight. It’s something we have to do because we love and want to take a gamble on it, and do it responsibly. And so we’ve been thinking about that same idea for 20 years, that we’re not going to do it for $100 million. We have to be scrappy about it."
Stay tuned with Collider for Weintraub's full conversation with Lawrence and for more on Constantine 2.
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