Keanu Reeves’ Constantine Director Teases A Much Darker Concept For Sequel
Director Francis Lawrence says Constantine 2 will be scarier and more violent than the original.
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The sequel no one thought was coming and some genuinely feared would, Constantine 2, is on the way and the director says you can expect a darker, scarier, and more violent story than the original. Francis Lawrence, who directed Keanu Reeves in 2005’s Constantine, spoke to The Wrap this week and said the studio had his hands tied in the first film. This time, Lawrence says, he plans “to really go at it and make a real R-rated Constantine.”
The Constantine that Keanu Reeves starred in back in 2005 is rated R, but Lawrence tells The Wrap that wasn’t the plan. “We followed, per Warner Bros., the rules to make a PG-13 movie…” Lawrence said. “But the ratings board gave us a hard R based on the gray zone of intensity.”
The result, the Slumberland director says, “was that we have an R-rated movie that’s really a PG-13 movie.” With Lawrence’s and Keanu Reeves’ second chance at Constantine given the go-ahead 17 years later, the director plans to not waste the opportunity. He says Constantine 2 will be “much scarier and much more violent,” so that it truly earns its R this time around.
While everyone just about expects announcements about Keanu Reeves appearing in future John Wick and maybe even Matrix projects, the confirmation that Constantine 2 was on the way was one of the more surprising revival project reveals from the past year. The first film turned a modest profit but was critically panned at the time and for the most part fans of the source material seemed to agree with the critics. John Constantine began his existence as a character in DC’s Saga of the Swamp Thing comic, and there was a time when no “Worst Comic Book Movies” list was complete without mentioning the 2005 film.
But in the years since Keanu Reeves since first played John Constantine, fandom has turned a kinder eye to the film. Now many fans seems to agree that if you allow yourself to either ignore or just choose to not care about the differences between the movie and the source material–Constantine is blonde in the comics and English, not to mention the movie puts a much stronger emphasis on Christianity–it’s a good flick. No doubt Reeves’ own growing reputation as a legendarily nice guy has helped viewers recalibrate their expectations.
It will be interesting to see how audiences react to Keanu Reeves in Constantine 2, particularly since they’ve been exposed to so many more different versions of the character since the 2005 film. A much more comic book-accurate take on Constantine was played by Matt Ryan in his own short-lived series, later as a guest in The CW‘s Arrowverse shows, and finally as a regular on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. He’s also voiced the character for animated features such as 2017’s Justice League Dark.
More recently, rather than Keanu Reeves as John Constantine, Jenna Coleman (Victoria) played a gender-swapped Johanna Constantine in Netflix’s The Sandman.
