FOLLOWING the confirmation that a sequel to 2005’s Constantine was given the green light by Warner Bros a little over a year ago, there has been no update to the film’s production status.

All that was known for the past year is what was reported by Deadline that director Francis Lawrence would be re-teaming with Keanu Reeves, with Akiva Goldsman set to write the screenplay and produce the film, alongside Bad Robot’s JJ Abrams and Hannah Minghella.

During a press tour for Lawrence’s upcoming Hunger Games prequel, GameSpot managed to squeeze a status update for the Constantine sequel out of the director.

According to him, the script for Constantine 2 does not even exist at the moment, as Lawrence, Reeves and Goldsman were still figuring things out when the WGA strikes happened.

“So Constantine 2 got obviously held up by the writers’ strike,” Lawrence told GameSpot.

“And we had to jump through a bunch of hurdles to get control of the character again, because other people had control of the Vertigo stuff. We have control.”

He also explained that there were hurdles they had to jump through, as Constantine is based on the Hellblazer graphics novel that is part of the Vertigo Comics label, which is a DC Comics property.

“Keanu and Akiva Goldsman and I have been in meetings and have been hashing out what we think the story is going to be, and there’s more meetings of those that have to happen. The script has to be written,” he added.

Lawrence then revealed that the people behind the film want Constantine 2 to be R-rated.

Differing greatly from the Hellblazer comics, the titular character in Lawrence’s Constantine is an occult detective with a different backstory, mannerisms and goals told in a modern noir story compared to the John Constantine from the source material, who is a magician that is capable of fighting demons and even superpowered beings set against comic book storytelling.