“Constantine 2” Will Be Rated R Says Director
One of the more exciting bits of news in recent months was that a sequel to 2005’s “Constantine” is on the way with star Keanu Reeves, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and director Francis Lawrence returning.
With Lawrence out promoting the Jason Momoa-led Netflix fantasy film “Slumberland,” the media has inevitably had a chance to ask him if he could talk about his plans for the “Constantine” follow-up.
Speaking with The Wrap, he says he does not have a script at this time, though the new movie’s storyline has been discussed endlessly with “lots of ideas” flying. The key difference now is “we [have] finally gotten past the hurdle of now we can go ahead and really do it”.
One key change from the original is it will be a ‘hard R’ rating. Lawrence shot the original film as a PG-13 – sticking to the rules of the rating’s violence, blood, language, and sexuality. It didn’t work, and the film was still slapped with an R rating by the MPA:
“The ratings board gave us a hard R based on their grey zone of intensity. And my big, big regret was that we have an R-rated movie that’s really a PG-13 movie. If I was going to have to go have an R, I would have really made an R-rated movie. I would have made it much scarier and much more violent and I would have really made an R-rated movie.
The idea is this time, at least for me, is to really go at it and make a real R-rated Constantine which is, I think, what people always wanted originally, not the PG-13 version that just happens to get an R.”
The plan is to also add more dark comedy this time out, with Lawrence saying John Constantine is “a funny character in a darkly comic kind of way and I would want to definitely add more of that sarcastic, cynical sense of humor to the story.”
The film isn’t likely to be his next project as it’s still in the early stages. Lawrence still has plenty of months of post-production on “The Hunger Games” prequel ahead of him before he can get around to filming whatever he plans to next.
