If you’re a Keanu Reeves fan, you’ll be happy to know a sequel to his hit film Constantine has been in the works for some time — but recently, one of Reeves’ co-stars from the original film revealed that the actor isn’t too thrilled with the scripts that have come about during the development process.
“[There’s] a lot of back and forth, because… I think Keanu [Reeves] is not so happy with the scripts,” actor Peter Stormare revealed in a recent interview with The Direct. “Because the first one wasn’t that successful in the beginning, it became a sleeper and became a cult movie, and now it is one of the biggest cult movies ever… To do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes.”
Stormare, who appeared as Lucifer in the 2005 original and is set to reprise his role in the sequel, added that Reeves wasn’t interested in making the next installment an action-heavy project.
“And I think Keanu says, ‘I’ve done ‘John Wick.’ This movie is spiritual. It’s about demons and regular people. And I wanted to keep it that way.’ And we talked about that. I want to do God coming down exactly the same way, but in a black suit and looking more or less like Lucifer from the first one. I’m 12 years older, so it’s going to be hard to, you know, completely imitate the first movie. But, I think from Keanu, he wants to do a sequel that is very close to the first one.”
Plus, it seems as though Reeves is concerned that Warner Bros. is looking to turn the production into something unnecessarily grand, akin to a Marvel project, which makes sense to a certain degree, considering Constantine is loosely based on the DC and Vertigo comic series Hellblazer and we know everyone wants a piece of a popular comic book property. Plus, Reeves recently had a meeting with DC Studios about the project. But the movie ultimately wouldn’t benefit from that kind of grandiose treatment, and it seems Reeves is well aware of that.
“It took a long time for [the original] to become a cult movie. It really worked, and it will work on the audience again,” Stormare said. “You don’t have to add a lot of action and shootouts. You have other movies. Don’t turn it into big Marvel… [Don’t turn it] into us flying around in harnesses all the time and shooting each other up. Don’t bring in the big guns. Let it be.”
Director Francis Lawrence is set to return for the sequel, but it remains to be seen when exactly it’ll start shooting, let alone be released.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
