You might have been expecting an announcement on a new “Constantine” movie or TV show, as reports have been pouring in on plans to continue telling stories of DC’s Hellblazer either with original actor Keanu Reeves or with a new actor (maybe Matt Ryan, who is playing the character on the Arrowverse shows). Though no new announcement was made, we did get a cool and fittingly weird idea about a “Constantine” sequel that never was, and it could have literally included Jesus Christ.
Before “Batman Begins” revolutionized the comicbook film, the R-rated “Constantine” gave us a different type of superhero film which put a heavy focus on the occult. Though the film was a moderate success, it never spawned the franchise it deserved, but according to producer Akiva Goldsman, there were certainly plans to continue stories starring Constantine.
“We wanted to make a hard-R sequel, I think we could probably make it tomorrow,” Goldsman said during Collider’s “Constantine” anniversary panel at Comic-Con@Home. “We tried a lot of different ways…to the studios who make it, which was Village Roadshow and Warner Bros., it was always sort of a feathered fish. Its oddness, the way it’s equally comfortable with a character scene between Keanu and [Rachel Weisz] as it is with demons hurling themselves at a man who is going to light his fist on fire and expel them. It’s odd. It’s not exactly action-packed, but it has action… Those seem to get harder and harder to make.”
Goldsman then shared one idea for a sequel that definitely could have made for an interesting film and turned the Internet upside down. “We’ve talked about it and we’ve had ideas, and I would love that, what if he woke up in a cell, he has to identify the prisoner? It was [screenwriter Frank Cabello’s] idea that [the prisoner] was Jesus. He comes up and he’s in New York. Yeah, we’ve talked about a sequel,” Goldsman lamented.
Sadly, as director Francis Lawrence revealed, the conversations were mostly one-sided because the studio saw no box office incentive to make more movies. “We talked about sequels more than the studio… It wasn’t a knockout success or critically acclaimed at the time,” Lawrence said.
You can watch the rest of the panel below.