If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? Keanu Reeves, since he’s returning as Constantine for a sequel that’s finally starting to come together. Director Francis Lawrence says the project should start seeing progress now that Thanksgiving is over.
The DCU is about to get a new lease of life. James Gunn’s slate of upcoming DC movies includes revamped versions of the Man of Steel in Superman: Legacy and the Dark Knight in The Brave and the Bold. But the thing that has me most excited is the Constantine 2 release date, where we’ll see Reeves back as DC’s resident chain-smoking exorcist.
Getting the new movie off the ground has been a battle, but recently things have been looking up, so much so the creative team is working on it as we speak. “Luckily, we managed to wrangle some control and started working on some ideas for Constantine 2, which we’re really excited about,” Lawrence tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s still the very beginning, as the strike put it on hold for a little bit. So we’re probably going to start getting back together after Thanksgiving and dig back in to try and crack it.”
Reeves himself is actually a producer who’s working on the horror movie from the ground up. He joins Akiva Goldsman and Lawrence as the three main creatives who’ll be injecting life into Constantine 2.
In the original, he portrayed one of the best DC characters, John Constantine, a suit-wearing paranormal investigator who can see spirits walk among the living. He’s trying to earn a way to heaven because he’s destined for hell due to attempting suicide, a mission that brings him face to face with Satan himself.
Constantine’s roots are in the DC/Vertigo comic Hellblazer, and the thriller movie stayed true to that spirit. It’s a dark, surreal film that has deep morbidity alongside some optimism toward mankind and what awaits us on the other side of life. Although Constantine did reasonably well, we’ve been waiting 18 years and counting for a sequel.
It seems the wait will soon be over. I’ll watch anything that has Keanu Reeves in it, and him doing John Wick but with demons? Hell. Yes. That’s a swift contender for one of the best movies of whatever year it comes out.
Watch this space. We have guides to the Swamp Thing release date and Creature Commandos release date for more scares in the DC sphere. If you prefer your heroes a bit lighter, we have a guide to the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow release date, and don’t forget our overview of the DC movies in order. We made it all make sense, so you don’t have to.