The Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DCEU have long been locked in a battle over trying to secure the services of Keanu Reeves, with both shared franchises desperate to sign one of the world’s most popular and beloved movie stars up for one of their projects.
Marvel might talk to him about almost every movie they make, but they still haven’t announced a role for him, although Ghost Rider appears to be the new frontrunner. On the other hand, Reeves already has a history with Warner Bros. and DC having played the title character in 2005’s underrated cult favorite Constantine.
The John Wick star hasn’t been shy in admitting that he’d love to portray the occult detective again, and there’ve been whispers that the studio are forging ahead with development on a long-awaited sequel. Though it’s unclear what will happen now with J.J. Abrams’ Justice League Dark show for HBO Max appearing to throw a spanner into the works.
Small screen Constantine Matt Ryan has already thrown his hat into the ring to reprise the role for that project, and while it remains to be seen if he’ll get the gig, we’ve now heard that DC’s rapidly-expanding multiverse will open the door to the possibility of having multiple versions of the character existing at the same time without stepping on the others’ toes.
According to our intel – which comes from the same sources that told us Justice League Dark and Green Lantern shows are coming to HBO Max before they were announced – similar to how both Robert Pattinson and Michael Keaton’s Batman will exist in the same universe, Warner Bros. are planning on having Keanu Reeves star as their main DCEU Constantine and also having another Constantine appear who’s more comic-accurate and who would feature in non-DCEU projects. Kind of like what we saw with Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix’s Jokers.
It makes sense that WB would want to double down on Constantine given the character’s popularity, but things could also get real confusing if not handled properly. As of now, though, we’re told they plan to have two big screen iterations (Reeves and someone else) in addition to the already established Arrowverse version and the one that we’ll see in the aforementioned Justice League Dark show. Though to be fair, it seems that could end up being Matt Ryan as well.