Keanu Reeves’ ‘Constantine’ Co-star Peter Stormare Reveals The ‘John Wick’ Actor Is The One Holding Up The Sequel
It’s taken a long time – 20 years to be exact – for a sequel to the 2005 cult classic Constantine to gain any traction. Still, despite the blessing of Warner Bros. and DC Studios, plus star Keanu Reeves, director Francis Lawrence, and writer Akiva Goldsman coming aboard, it might not happen.
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But why not? What is getting in the way of Reeves and the gang returning to the world the actor is eager to get back to? Well, according to a devilish fellow who was part of the cast as well back in ‘05, the answer is one that may come as a shock.
Peter Stormare, who played Lucifer and is anticipating reprising the part, says the issue is Reeves is not ready, and won’t be until he sees a script he likes. “It’s a lot of back and forth,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Direct.
“I think Keanu [Reeves], which I know pretty good, is not so happy with the scripts and usually what comes out of the studios,’ Stormare continued. “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.”
He added, “But 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.” After John Wick, Reeves is keener, Stormare believes, on dealing with “regular people” – and demons.
“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,” he explained. Stormare has some ideas in mind, but knows he might be getting too old.
“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,” he continued.
“I think Keanu is very proud of that. He was fighting for it to be a character that he loved and wanted to develop. And I mean, with Tilda Swinton doing Gabriel, it is a cool character. And even my Lucifer is a cool character that you can relate to as a viewer…” Stormare added.
“They wanted to dress me up like, you know, like a devil with a tail and a pitchfork and whatever, but we were really fighting for me to have, like, an off-white suit and do it very simple,” he recalled. The struggle for everybody to get what they want may carry into the new one, especially if the studio wants more gunfights.
“It turns into an action movie, and not like going deeper and deeper into the characters. I think he wants to do his character again, Constantine, as grounded as it was in the first one. It took a long time for you to become a cult movie, it really worked, and it will work on the audience again. You don’t have to add a lot of action and shootouts. You have other movies. Don’t turn it into big Marvel…” Stormare urged.
“[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,” he said. There is a script but Stormare hasn’t seen it. Until then, any discussions are “hearsay” and they aren’t much further along than they were a few years ago. However, the actor hopes for a sequel that links with the original the way Godfather 2 connects with its prequel.
“That is just hearsay from him, you know, and it’s trying to be very secretive. As we say, both me and him, just do the first movie again and add some other elements, and you have a sequel. ‘The Godfather 2’ was a sequel that was built on number one. They are similar. You can actually see number one and two together, and they stick together. So, don’t do a completely different movie, then it won’t hold together. And I think that’s where we are, yeah,” he clarified.
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