Francis Lawrence is “actively working on a script” for the ‘Constantine’ sequel.
The 53-year-old director helmed the 2005 horror-action flick - which starred Keanu Reeves as the titular supernatural exorcist and demonologist John Constantine - and is due to get back behind the camera for its follow-up, and Lawrence has now reassured fans he is still busy writing the story for the upcoming movie.
He told Collider: “We are now actively working on a script.
“So it’s really not that it’s just like, ‘Oh yeah, now we think the world is ready for it.’ I certainly think there is a bigger fan base and certainly it’s become a kind of cult classic, which has been really exciting to see and very strange, but it’s something we’ve always loved.
“We’re now in a spot where we are actively working on a script.”
Lawrence added the idea of a sequel had been floated for years, and it was only in 2020 that the ball started really rolling on the project.
He said: “The truth is, somewhere around the 15th anniversary or something, we did a Zoom and we all were discussing trying to get it up and going again. And again, we were just more active with it and finally got it past all these hurdle.”
‘Constantine’ followed the supernatural exorcist and demonologist who helps LAPD policewoman Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) investigate her twin sister’s mysterious suicide, only to discover that fallen angels from Hell are attempting to enter the human world.
Even if some fans were critical of the Constantine’s on-screen inaccuracies compared to his comic book counterpart, Lawrence felt like the 2005 film was “really worthy of a sequel” more than any of his other pictures.
He said: “There is a world that you can really explore and there’s a character that we certainly loved and really wanted to explore.
“When the movie first came out, it didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, wow, the world is embracing our version of ‘Constantine’.’
“There was a lot of criticism that we didn’t have the blonde English version of him, and that Keanu was wrong for it, and all those kinds of things. And I think that sort of opinion has really swung around and changed, but we always really loved the world and we always wanted to do a sequel.”
The follow-up flick - which was announced by Warner Bros. In 2022 - will share its R-rating with its predecessor, and Lawrence stressed the second ‘Constantine’ would be more mature than the original picture.
He said: “We had been thinking about it. We had also been given an R-rating when we kind of made a PG-13 movie and followed all the PG-13 rules.
“So we’re like, ‘F*** it, let’s go and do a sequel and really make an R-rated movie. Give us an R, let us make a real R-rated movie.’”
