Keanu Reeves’ ‘Constantine 2’ Gets ‘Renewed Hope’ After James Gunn’s DC Exit, Says Director: ‘People at DC Were an Impediment to Us’

Following the news that James Gunn and Peter Safran are out as co-studio heads at DC, “Constantine” director Francis Lawrence is feeling a “renewed hope” about his long-awaited sequel to the “Hellblazer”-inspired 2005 action-horror.

“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,” Lawrence told Collider.

He continued: “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 noted that if DC wishes to do another version of “Constantine” for its “shared universe,” the two could coexist. “So, I have renewed hope as of yesterday that there might be some possibility for forward movement there,” he said.

It’s the latest update on the film’s front, which star Keanu Reeves has said he’s been trying to make for “over a decade.” Back in Feb. 2025, the “Point Break” actor told Inverse that he thought the sequel was ready for a script: “We’ve been trying to make this film for over a decade, and we just recently put a story together and pitched it to DC Studios and they said, ‘Okay.’ So, we’re going to try and write a script.”

Akiva Goldsman was reported to be writing the script, with J.J. Abrams as one of the producers.

Most recently, Lawrence directed “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping,” which hits theaters Nov. 20.