Constantine director suggests James Gunn firing might be great news for Constantine director

Good news, according to Lawrence, the Hunger Games regular who happened to be giving an interview to Collider this week (via Deadline) shortly after news of Gunn’s ouster broke. And for Lawrence, the scuttling of years’ worth of plans for DC movie projects can only be good news, mostly because it sounds like Gunn wasn’t wild about his pitches for a Constantine 2. “Not that I want anybody to lose their jobs,” Lawrence said, before making it sound like he isn’t too worried about people losing their jobs: “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.” 

Said impediment (i.e., well-known filmmaker James Gunn) had talked on a few occasions about being approached about a possible Constantine follow-up, including by Reeves—but remained publicly non-committal. Lawrence, though, was pretty clearly viewing him and Safran as a roadblock, while a new regime will be a whole new set of people who might not potentially say no! (Sure, we’re not sure if Jeremy Latcham, a former Marvel guy and public Christian, is going to be wild about a series literally called Hellblazer—but 2005’s Constantine did have more than its fair share of angels, fallen or otherwise, on hand, so maybe he can be convinced.) The important thing is that it’s a new regime that hasn’t said no to a 21-years-later sequel to a mild box office success yet. The impediments are finally out of the way!