#Will Constantine 2 Ever Happen? Producer Akiva Goldsman Gives an Update at Comic-Con

We may never see Constantine 2, but director Francis Lawrence and producer Akiva Goldsman desperately wanted it to happen. It came up at various points over the years, and they even had some wild ideas for it. In the end, it just proved to be a tough sell. Be that as it may, Goldsman says they would probably make it tomorrow, given the chance.

Keanu Reeves, director Francis Lawrence and producer Akiva Goldsman reunited for a [email protected] virtual panel to reflect on the 2005’s Constantine for its 15th anniversary. The DC Comics adaptation has gained popularity over the years. As such, they were asked about possible sequel plans and whether the subject came up. Here’s what Goldsman had to say about it.

“Yes. Oh my god yes. It endlessly came up. Boy we wanted to. We wanted to make a hard R sequel. We wanted to. Oh god yeah. I think we would probably make it tomorrow. Yes, we tried a lot of different ways… To the studios who made it, which were Village Roadshow and Warner Bros., it was always a little bit of a feathered fish. Its oddness… It’s odd, right? It’s not really action-packed. It just has a bunch of action. This movie isn’t exactly a thing, it’s a few things, which is what I think is beautiful about it. But those seem to get harder and harder to make… We’ve talked about it, and we’ve had ideas. I would love it if he wakes up in a cell, and he has to identify the prisoner…and it was Jesus…Yeah. We talked about a sequel.”

It was recently revealed that Keanu Reeves and Francis Lawrence met to discuss a sequel. There were also unconfirmed rumors floating around that Reeves might reprise the role for a project on HBO Max produced by J.J. Abrams. As Lawrence tells it, they talked about doing Constantine 2 a lot more than the studio ever did.

“We definitely talked about sequels more than the studios because the movie did fairly well. And this was also still a time when people sold DVDs. So I think it did decently at the time. But, it wasn’t a knockout success., and it also wasn’t really sort of critically acclaimed by any means at the time. The kind of cool thing about this movie is, in the 15 years since it released, every time I do a movie and I go out and travel the world and do junkets, I am signing Constantine DVDs more than any other movie that I’ve done. Over the years, in different countries, people really love this movie. I think that it’s found a new life in a weird way.”

By modern standards, Constantine was, at best, modestly successful at the box office, earning $230 million worldwide. But as Francis Lawrence points out, the home video market was more robust back then. And, not for nothing, but before Wonder Woman arrived in 2017, this was the highest-grossing DC movie not featuring Batman or Superman in it. Brief though it may have been, Batman did cameo in Suicide Squad.

The character has become popular in recent years. This is in no small part thanks to Matt Ryan’s portrayal on the small screen in the short-lived Constantine TV show, as well as Legends of Tomorrow. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on all of the other [email protected] happenings throughout the weekend. This news comes to us via Comic-Con.org.

Topics: Constantine, [email protected], Comic-Con