Keanu Reeves will return to a fan favourite role. Fans will get to see Reeves as exorcist/demonologist John Constantine after 17 years since the original first hit theatres. The supernatural thriller will re-team Reeves with original director Francis Lawrence. The sequel to the cult favourite 2005 film Constantine is in the works.
For the unversed, the original film, which is based on DC’s Hellblazer comics, follows Constantine through his cursed existence fighting evil demons. The movie grossed over $200 million worldwide upon its release. Akiva Goldsman is set to pen the screenplay and produce the project through his Weed Road Pictures, alongside Bad Robot’s J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella, according to Deadline.
Reeves always shared his hopes to one day step back into the role of the trenchcoat-wearing hero. In a conversation with Stephen Colbert last year, he said Constantine was at the top of his list of characters he’d love to return to. “I would love to be John Constantine again,” he said adding, “I’ve tried.”
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During a 15th-anniversary panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Goldsman said they had tried for years to make a Constantine sequel, but the studio said the box office earnings didn’t warrant it. “We wanted to make a hard-R sequel,” he said at the time. “I think we’d probably make it tomorrow. Yes, we tried a lot of different ways to find… it was always to the studios who made it, which were Village Roadshow and Warner Bros.”
The actor went on to say, “It was always a little bit of a feathered fish.” Reeves, whose acting career has spanned four decades, has recently appeared in DC League of Super-Pets as the voice of Batman, The Matrix Resurrections as Neo and Bill & Ted Face the Music as Ted. Reeves is also currently executive producing John Wick: Chapter 4, in which he also plays the lead role, and recently produced the movie Already Gone and the short film Salacia. His next role, however, will be something new for the movie star, a lead role on TV.