‘Constantine 2’ Director Officially Confirms “Renewed Hope” For Sequel After James Gunn’s DC Exit [Exclusive]

To the joy of many, Warner Bros. started developing a sequel to Constantine in 2022, with Keanu Reeves and director Francis Lawrence set to return. Akiva Goldsman was writing it, and J.J. Abrams was among the producers. When Lawrence talked to Collider in 2025, he said they were closer than ever to making it. Now, after a major shake-up at DC Studios, Lawrence has a massive update on what fans can expect from Constantine 2.

The people making the calls at DC are about to change. On November 9, Skydance announced that James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as co-heads of DC Studios. Jeremy Latcham, who worked with Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy, takes over as president and chief creative officer on December 1. Speaking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Lawrence said the leadership change could give Constantine 2 the breathing room it needs to actually happen. When Weintraub asked if the movie was more likely to happen now, Lawrence pointed to the people who’d been running DC, explaining:

"Well, I’ll tell you this. Not that I want anybody to lose their jobs, so this is not like a schadenfreude kind of thing, but I will say that we’ve been trying to make Constantine 2 for 20-something years, and we have an idea, and we have a script, and we’ve been wanting to make it, and the people that were at DC were an impediment to us making it. So, we are now more hopeful as of yesterday’s news that maybe now there will be another opportunity. But again, we’ve been trying to make this for 20-something years, and there’s always been obstacles in the road to making it, and it’s not me, it’s not Keanu, it’s not Akiva. J.J. [Abrams] is on it, as well. We all want to do it. So, it’s really going to be people at Paramount, Warner, whoever’s running DC now, getting everybody on board to say, like, 'Hey, we can do a sequel of our version of Constantine.'"

Lawrence also brought up the possibility that DC might want a different John Constantine for its shared universe, but notes that wouldn't prevent him from wanting to make the Reeves-led sequel anyway. "Personally, I don’t even care if somebody has a plan for some sort of shared universe, and they want to do another version of Constantine," said Lawrence. "If they just let us do the sequel to our version, they can coexist. So, I have renewed hope as of yesterday that there might be some possibility for forward movement there."

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Superhero Team Should You Join? Avengers · X-Men · Teen Titans · The Boys

Every team is a personality test with a uniform. One saves the world and argues about it the whole way home. One has been fighting for the right to exist since the day it formed. One is still working out who it is while the fighting happens. And one has no powers at all, plus no intention of playing fair. Eight questions decide where you actually belong.

🛡️Avengers(Marvel Studios)

🧬X-Men(Marvel)

🐦Teen Titans(DC)

💊The Boys(Prime Video)

FIND YOUR TEAM →

01

What kind of power would you actually want? The power matters less than what you would be willing to do with it.

ASomething enormous and obvious. I would not hide it. BSomething I was born with, whether I wanted it or not. CSomething still growing that I cannot quite control. DNone at all. I would rather nobody sees me coming.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

Why join a team at all? Nobody puts on the suit for the reason they say out loud.

ABecause some threats are too big for anyone alone. BBecause people like me are safer together than apart. CBecause I did not want to do any of this alone. DBecause somebody has to hold these people accountable.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

How do you feel about the people in charge? Every team has a chain of command. Very few of them survive contact.

AI will follow a good leader and argue with a bad one. BThey have never protected people like me. I expect nothing. CI am still learning who to trust, and getting it wrong. DThey are the problem. That is the entire point.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What is your role inside a group? Every roster needs the same handful of people to function.

AThe big personality. I take up room and I earn it. BThe one who protects whoever arrived most recently. CThe heart. I keep everybody talking to each other. DThe one who says the uncomfortable thing out loud.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

How do you win a fight you should lose? This is the scene the entire film gets built around.

AOverwhelming force, and a very good landing. BWorking together in a way nobody saw coming. CRefusing to give up long after I should have. DPreparation, leverage, and one extremely dirty trick.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

What is this work costing you? Nobody does this for free. The bill just arrives differently for everyone.

AMy private life. Everybody knows my face now. BMy safety. The world is frightened of me. CMy childhood. I grew up faster than I should have. DMy peace. I cannot stop now that I know.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

How should the world see your team? Half of this job is public relations, and everybody knows it.

AAs icons. The team everyone is relieved to see arrive. BAs people. Just people, which is all we ever asked. CAs proof the next generation is going to be fine. DThey should not see us at all until it is done.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

The offer arrives. What makes you say yes? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your team.

AThe scale. If the world is ending, I want to be there. BThe promise that I would not have to hide anymore. CThe people. I would be joining friends, not an employer. DThe chance to take down somebody who deserves it.

REVEAL MY TEAM →

Recruitment Is Complete Your Team Is…

Four teams, four completely different reasons to put yourself in danger for strangers. This is the roster you actually belong on, what they would want from you, and what it would cost you to stay.

The Avengers

You belong where the stakes are largest and the personalities are loudest. This is a team of people who are all used to being the most important person in the room, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it keeps nearly falling apart.

• The Avengers are not friends who became a team. They are a team that slowly and reluctantly became friends, and you would recognise every stage of that process.
• You can hold your own among big egos without needing to win every exchange, which is the real entry requirement here.
• The arguing is part of the method. This group does its best thinking mid-disagreement, usually at volume, usually in a very expensive building.
• When the sky opens, they are who shows up. You would want to be standing in that line.

The X-Men

You have never had the luxury of being thanked for this. The X-Men protect a world that has never once been comfortable with them existing, and something in you understands exactly why they keep doing it anyway.

• This is the only team on the list whose central conflict is not a villain. It is being wanted gone by the same people they keep saving.
• You know what it is to be the outsider in a room and to decide, anyway, that you will not make yourself smaller so everyone else is comfortable.
• The X-Men are the most genuine found family in comics. People arrive with nowhere else to go and are never once asked to explain themselves.
• You would not be joining for the glory. There has never been any.

The Teen Titans

You do not want colleagues, you want your people. The Titans are the team where the friendship came first and the world-saving turned up afterwards as an inconvenient side effect.

• Every Titan is somebody's sidekick who decided to stop being one. That decision, not the villain of the week, is what the team is actually about.
• You would be joining people who are all working themselves out at the same time as you, which is far less lonely than being the only one.
• The Titans lose regularly. Then they eat together and come back better, which is a more honest model of growing up than any other team here manages.
• The tower would be loud, chaotic, and the first place that ever felt like yours.

The Boys

You are not asking who to trust. You worked out the answer a while ago and it was nobody in a cape. This is where you go once you have decided the people in charge need watching, and that nobody else is going to do it.

• The Boys have no powers, no mandate and no funding. What they have is leverage, patience, and a very high tolerance for consequences.
• You are the person in the room who notices the thing everybody else has quietly agreed not to mention.
• This is not a heroic team and it has never pretended otherwise. It is a group of damaged people doing necessary work in ways nobody would call clean.
• You would not sleep well. You would keep going anyway.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Francis Lawrence Wants To Make a Hard-R ‘Constantine 2’

The first Constantine already carries an R rating, but what bothers Lawrence to this day is that he made it expecting a PG-13. "So, part of the idea from the very beginning was because we followed all the rules to make a PG-13 movie, and we got hit with an R," explained Lawrence. "They told us, 'You can’t do anything about it. It’s going to be an R no matter what.' We tried to fight them on it, and they said, 'Nope. It’s an R,' but really, it’s an R-rated PG-13 movie, which pisses me off." That experience settled one question early on about the kind of sequel they wanted to make: "And so we all kind of came back and said, 'Okay, when we do this next time, we’re making the hard-R version of Constantine.' So when we do it, it’s going to be the hard-R version of Constantine."

When Weintraub brought up the budget and how they wouldn't be able to spend a ton of money to make the sequel, Lawrence brought up his and Reeves’ usual fees as an example of where they’d have to make some sacrifices:

"We have to be responsible. We want to make it. This is not the kind of movie that I would charge full freight and Keanu could charge full freight. It’s something we have to do because we love and want to take a gamble on it, and do it responsibly. And so we’ve been thinking about that same idea for 20 years, that we’re not going to do it for $100 million. We have to be scrappy about it."

Stay tuned with Collider for Weintraub's full conversation with Lawrence and for more on Constantine 2.

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  John Constantine

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  Angela Dodson / Isabel Dodson

Supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine helps a policewoman prove her sister's death was not a suicide, but something more.