MOVIE NEWS – After almost 20 years, the sequel to Constantine the Demon Hunter is finally ready, and it stars Keanu Reeves! He’s gotten old enough for John Constantine.

Constantine the Demon Hunter (2005) was a good comic book movie, standing out from the crowd of masked vigilantes, because John Constantine is not a hero in the classical sense. Its success was partly due to Keanu Reeves, so we expected the star, who has been soaring again with the John Wick films, to return in the role when the sequel is made. And it will be!

Deadline reports that the darned sequel to Constantine the Demon Hunter is just getting made after much ado. As Keanu Reeves reprises his role as John Constantine, the chain-smoking anti-hero battling the forces of hell, original director Francis Lawrence is back in the director’s chair. The script is written by Akiva Goldsman, who also produces the new Constantine film. Goldsman is considered a veteran in the industry, although perhaps it’s not such a good credential for him that he also worked on the screenplays for Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. He’s also penned A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, Will Smith’s I Am Legend, the 2017 adaptation of The Set in the Tower, and has a filmography that includes series such as DC’s Titans, Star Trek: Discovery and Picard. J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot will produce the sequel to Constantine alongside Akiva Goldsman’s Weed Road Pictures.

The creator of J.J. Abrams also has another Constantine project, a new series, which was announced in early 2021. It’s being developed for HBO Max, but alongside the joyous news of a sequel to the 2005 movie, we’ve also got some bad news about Abrams’ series. Neither this, nor the other DC series focusing on Madame Xanadu, Madame X, will be offered by Warner Bros. Discovery, which was to be expected after the recent massacres that saw Max’s content severely curtailed, so it’s been dumped, at least at Warner, alongside Abrams and Matt Reeves’ noir Batman animated series Caped Crusader. Bad Robot would have produced both. Deadline’s sources tell us that we don’t have to say goodbye to these either, as the creators are trying their hand at other platforms and Warner Bros. Television, the other producer, is also very confident that both series can be made elsewhere. Four scripts are said to have been completed for the Constantine series, written by British literary writer Guy Bolton, while Madame X has a pilot script so far and is being developed by Angela Robinson.

Constantine the Demon Hunter was made for $70-100M and has grossed $230.9M in its theatrical run. It has been up in the air for more than ten years whether or not there will be a sequel: in addition to fans, Lawrence and Keanu Reeves have repeatedly expressed their desire to see it made. The winds are now in their favour, as Warner Bros. Discovery head Dave Zaslav favours theatrical release. And in some ways it’s fortunate that Constantine 2 has been delayed so long, because Reeves has grown into the role, or more accurately, with his current John Wickes physique, he’ll be a more credible burnt-out demon hunter than he was in his youth and youth.

Source: MovieWeb