Francis Lawrence has said James Gunn and Peter Safran’s departure from DC Studios has given him “renewed hope” that the long-awaited sequel to Constantine could finally get made.
Lawrence, who directed the 2005 supernatural thriller starring Keanu Reeves, revealed that he is hopeful that the change in leadership could finally give the project another opportunity.
“Not that I want anybody to lose their jobs, so this is not like a schadenfreude kind of thing, but I will say that we’ve been trying to make Constantine 2 for 20-something years, and we have an idea, and we have a script, and we’ve been wanting to make it, and the people that were at DC were an impediment to us making it,” Lawrence told Collider.
“It’s not me, it’s not Keanu, it’s not Akiva. JJ [Abrams] is on it, as well. We all want to do it,” he added, referring to screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and producer JJ Abrams.
Whether the sequel finally happens will now depend on the “people at Paramount, Warner, whoever’s running DC now, getting everybody on board to say, like, ‘Hey, we can do a sequel of our version of Constantine,’” he said.
Gunn and Safran, who have run DC Studios since 2022, announced on Monday that they would step down from their leadership roles from December. The pair, who were tasked with rebuilding DC’s superhero franchise, are leaving their executive positions following a turbulent four years that saw mixed box-office results and a major corporate shake-up at Warner Bros.
Their exit comes just weeks after Paramount completed its acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery in October. Former Marvel Studios executive Jeremy Latcham, whose credits include Iron Man, The Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy, will take over as DC Studios' president and chief creative officer.
However, Gunn is still involved in his follow-up to 2025's Superman, Man of Tomorrow, which is due in cinemas in July 2027.
Days before Gunn and Safran’s departure was announced, DC Studios hired Francis Galluppi, the filmmaker behind The Last Stop in Yuma County, to write and direct a new film about Constantine, according to The Wrap. The project is separate from the sequel Lawrence and Reeves have been trying to make, and no cast has been announced.
“Personally, I don’t even care if somebody has a plan for some sort of shared universe, and they want to do another version of Constantine,” Lawrence said. “If they just let us do the sequel to our version, they can coexist.”
Warner Bros first announced the sequel was in development in September 2022, with Reeves set to reprise his role as the chain-smoking, demon-hunting John Constantine and Lawrence returning to direct. Goldsman was brought on to write the screenplay, with Abrams among the producers.
In February 2025, Reeves told Inverse that the team had been “trying to make this film for over a decade”.
“We just recently put a story together and pitched it to DC Studios and they said, ‘Okay’. So, we’re going to try and write a script,” he said.
The original Constantine was based on the DC Comics and Vertigo character who first appeared in The Saga of the Swamp Thing before getting his own comic series, Hellblazer. Reeves played a cynical exorcist with the ability to see angels and demons, who becomes caught up in a supernatural conspiracy while investigating the apparent suicide of a young woman.
The film, which also starred Rachel Weisz, Tilda Swinton, and Shia LaBeouf, received mixed reviews when it first arrived in cinemas but went on to develop a devoted following. It earned more than $230m worldwide against a reported $100m production budget.