Keanu Reeves hasn’t given up on lighting another cigarette, squinting into the dark, and battling demons as John Constantine. Two decades after Francis Lawrence’s 2005 supernatural thriller introduced Reeves as DC’s chain-smoking exorcist, the actor is still holding out hope for a sequel. And, judging by his latest update, Constantine 2 might finally be clawing its way out of development hell and into James Gunn’s DCU.
When asked by Rotten Tomatoes how things were going, Reeves sounded cautiously upbeat: “Fingers crossed. Another draft of the script came in. We’re waiting. We’re gonna take it to the studio and hopefully they like it too.” That alone should perk up fans who’ve been replaying the original on streaming, wondering if the cult hit would ever get another shot.
The first Constantine wasn’t exactly a smash hit. Released in 2005, it pulled in $280 million worldwide, a solid number but not the big box office Warner Bros. wanted. Critics were split, but audiences slowly kept the film alive. Tilda Swinton’s archangel Gabriel, Rachel Weisz’s detective, and Djimon Hounsou’s Midnite helped create a weird little world that gained traction over time. Eventually, Constantine settled comfortably into cult classic status, the kind of movie that fans keep asking about at comic cons while executives shrug.
The sequel was first confirmed in 2022, with Reeves, Lawrence, and even J.J. Abrams onboard. Then came silence. By 2024, a draft was reportedly finished, but Reeves himself wasn’t thrilled. Actor Peter Stormare, who played Lucifer, admitted Reeves “was not so happy with the scripts” and warned against turning Constantine 2 into a superhero slugfest: “Don’t turn it into big Marvel… Don’t bring in the big guns. Let it be.”
Things seem to be moving again, though. Reeves appears more satisfied with the latest draft by Akiva Goldsman, a name that may trigger mixed feelings. Yes, he wrote Batman & Robin, the neon-lit disaster that gave us George Clooney’s awful take. But he also wrote the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend and Cinderella Man. So Goldsman knows how to deliver both clunkers and winners. Reeves and Lawrence, at least, seem “super, super excited”, according to the director’s own comments earlier this year.
The timing is tricky. James Gunn is busy rebuilding DC Studios with Superman, Supergirl, and a slate of Elseworlds projects like The Batman Part II. Constantine 2 would slide neatly into that Elseworlds category, standing apart from Gunn’s mainline DC Universe. That separation might give Reeves and Lawrence room to keep things grounded.
Constantine wasn’t designed to be a franchise starter, but the character’s following and Reeves’ undying charisma have kept fans invested for almost 20 years. If Warner Bros. greenlights the project, we could finally see Reeves return to the trench coat and exorcisms that made the original such a peculiar hit.
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