Officially announced back in September, Constantine 2 is finally happening with Keanu Reeves coming back to play DC’s John Constantine for an official sequel to the 2005 movie. Francis Lawrence is also returning to direct the brand new Constantine adventure, and Lawrence explains to The Wrap this week that the sequel will be made with a different mindset.
Back in 2005, the first Constantine movie was released with an “R” rating, but it wasn’t actually intended to be a rated “R” movie when it was being made. As for Constantine 2, however, it sounds like Lawrence and the team will be shooting for that rating from the outset.
Lawrence explains, “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 their the gray zone of intensity. 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.”
“The idea is this time, at least for me, is to really go at it and make a real R-rated Constantine which is, I think, what people always wanted originally, not the PG-13 version that just happens to get an R,” Lawrence continues.
Lawrence also tells The Wrap, teasing another new approach for the upcoming sequel, “I think John Constantine is a funny character in a darkly comic kind of way and I would want to definitely add more of that sarcastic, cynical sense of humor to the story.”
Akiva Goldsman will write the screenplay and produce the project through his Weed Road Pictures, alongside Bad Robot’s J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella.
“Reeves will reprise as supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine who in the original is dying but stays around to save his soul by keeping demons from hell from breaching earth. He also gets between a battle between the archangel Gabriel and Lucifer.”
With 2005’s Constantine amassing a fan following over the years and Keanu Reeves’s career currently hotter than ever thanks to the John Wick movies, it makes sense that Warner Bros. is now interested in bringing the DC character back to the big screen. The 2005 movie made $230 million worldwide back in 2005, against a $100 million production budget.
Matt Ryan brought the character to the small screen in 2014 with NBC’s short-lived “Constantine.” He has continued to play him in various other live action & animated projects.
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