Keanu Reeves would love to revisit the role of DC comics‘ John Constantine – in a sequel to a film that was under-appreciated at the time of release but has since had a resurgence as a cult favourite.
Reeves is no stranger to sequels – last year, he appeared in Bill and Ted 3 (entitled Face the Music) and he will next be seen in The Matrix 4 and John Wick 4. But Constantine is a role that he hasn’t yet had the chance to reprise, with the film coming out during a limbo time for comic book films – between the release of renowned turkey Catwoman and Christopher Nolan‘s acclaimed Batman Begins.
Due to this, Constantine underperformed at the box office and also critically (it has a rotten rating on review-aggregator Rotten Tomatoes). However, with inspired casting such as Tilda Swinton as Gabriel, Gavin Rossdale as Balthazar, Peter Stormare as Satan and Djimon Hounsou as Midnite – it has gained popularity as the years have gone on.
Now Reeves has reiterated his desire to revisit the character in an interview with Esquire; “I love playing Constantine. John Constantine. I’ve played a lot of Johns. How many Johns have I played? I don’t even know. I think it’s over ten. But anyway, I’d love to have the chance to play Constantine again.” [Fact Check: it has been calculated that Keanu has played 8 Johns]
On the fifteenth anniversary of Constantine last year, director Francis Lawrence spoke to SlashFilm about the sequel potential.
“I think we all wanted to do it. It was successful enough…We worked on the sequel for a while. It was tricky to come up with where to take it. What I really liked about the first one was it was a really personal story, so I thought it’d be a mistake to get caught up in the supernatural gobbledygook. The idea of a personal story was really interesting, and that was the hard thing to come across.”
Lawrence continued; “We have been talking about it recently. It’s always stuck with all of us because we all love the movie, and especially realizing there’s a real cult following for this movie, it’d be fun to make. Keanu, Akiva, and I have actually talked about it.”
However, it sounds as if working out the rights would be a nightmare; “Unfortunately, I don’t even remember who has it, but with all these shared universes that exist now, with Constantine being a part of Vertigo, which is a part of DC, people have plans for these shared universes. You know, possibly different Constantines and things like that. Right now, we don’t have that character available to us for TV or movies, which is a bummer.”
Lawrence concluded; “We all investigated it, but I think it’s kind of crazy when you have Keanu, who would love to do another Constantine, and us wanting to do another Constantine, and people are like, “Uh, no, we got other plans.” We’ll see what happens.”