It’s been less than a week since news broke of a major shakeup in the world of DC Studios, leaving many to wonder what the future holds for the franchise after the exit of James Gunn and Peter Safran. In addition to the duo being the masterminds behind the future of the franchise, they were also directly involved in many movies for the series, such as the upcoming Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow.
With principal photography having wrapped, Gunn will still be quite involved in the Superman sequel, though with him previously being reported to develop a third movie that built towards a Justice League team-up, plans for that series are currently unknown. Additionally, it was just earlier this month that Evil Dead Wrath filmmaker Francis Galluppi was announced as writing a John Constantine movie, with plans for that project now being uncertain.
Amid the shakeup, director of the original Constantine Francis Lawrence shared with Collider that he still hopes to move forward on his own Constantine sequel. The filmmaker explained:
“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.”
He continued, “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 [Reeves], it’s not Akiva [Goldsman]. 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.'”
The 2005 Constantine was released at an interesting time, as movies like Spider-Man and Daredevil proved that Marvel could make a run for the success on the big screen that was previously only possible with big-name DC heroes like Superman or Batman. The movie was a modest financial hit, despite not resonating with critics, though the darker concepts and themes of the character has earned the movie a cult following in the subsequent years.
John Constantine got his own TV series in 2014, which cemented his legacy in the Arrowverse of DC adaptations. When Gunn and Safran were appointed to spearhead DC Studios, it was expected to launch a complete refresh of the franchise going forward, though with The Batman having been released before they took over, the Robert Pattinson-starring movie stood in a universe all its own.
Lawrence admitted that he knew DC likely wants an all-new Constantine actor, and hoped both a new actor and Reeves could coexist.
“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,” the filmmaker shared. “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.”
One interesting aspect of the original Constantine, that likely impacted its success, was that it earned an R-rating, despite the fact that Lawrence attempted to tone it down to secure a PG-13. Were Lawrence to get the chance to make his sequel, he would intentionally lean much more fully into the R-rated realm.
“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 … 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,” Lawrence recalled. “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.”
Stay tuned for updates on the possible big-screen future of John Constantine.
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