The career renaissance of Keanu Reeves is currently in full swing, with the actor in the midst of one of the hottest streaks of his life that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon, as Bill & Ted Face the Music, John Wick: Chapter 4 and The Matrix 4 are all on the horizon. Despite his status as one of Hollywood’s most popular and beloved stars, however, the 55 year-old still hasn’t taken the plunge and signed on to a major comic book franchise.
It isn’t for a lack of trying, though, with both Marvel and DC reportedly courting him for almost every movie that they make, but as it stands, the actor’s last foray into the genre remains 2005’s underrated cult favorite Constantine. However, there’s been widespread speculation that Reeves could be tempted to return for a long-awaited sequel, something he admitted he’d be more than happy to do.
With Constantine celebrating its fifteenth anniversary, the filmmakers have been reminiscing about the Hellblazer adaptation and revealing some new details, including why it ended up getting slapped with an R-rating. Producer Akiva Goldsman, meanwhile, addressed the continued demands for a second outing, and admitted that the studio were never really on board with the idea.
“Boy, we wanted to, we wanted to do a hard-R sequel. I think we’d probably make it tomorrow. We tried a lot of different ways. It’s odd. It’s not really action-packed, it just has a bunch of action. This movie isn’t really 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, and even then we talked about it, we had ideas.”
Director Francis Lawrence recently revealed that he’d spoken with his leading man about ideas for potential follow-ups, but Goldsman offered a tantalizing glimpse of the wild direction a Constantine sequel could have headed, with Jesus Christ himself becoming a supporting character.
“I love that one of John wakes up in a cell, he has to identify a prisoner. Remember? It was Frank Cappello’s idea. The prisoner was Jesus. He comes up and he’s in New York. Just, yeah, we talked about a few scenes.”
While rumors of a Constantine sequel continue to gather steam, it seems unlikely that the studio would go for such a controversial pitch, but even if Keanu Reeves doesn’t return for a second big screen outing, the character will nonetheless be back on our screens in the not-too-distant future as part of HBO Max’s Justice League Dark series.
