There's a new Constantine film in the works at DC, and the director attached is Francis Galluppi, the man behind the upcoming Evil Dead Wrath. If that sentence means nothing to you, don't worry. I'm about to explain exactly who John Constantine is, why the Keanu Reeves film only told half the story, and why this new one has me properly excited.
The news comes from Dread Central, which reports that Galluppi is set to direct a new Constantine film for DC. It's genuinely early days. Dread Central's own write-up is careful to say the project "is still very early in development" and jokes that "these things have a habit of being dead by dawn", which is fair warning that nothing here is locked in yet. But the fact that a name this interesting is attached at all is worth sitting up for.
Who is John Constantine, actually?
If your only reference point is the 2005 film with Keanu Reeves, you've met maybe a third of the character. John Constantine first turned up in Saga of the Swamp Thing in 1985, then got his own series, Hellblazer, in 1988. He's a British occult detective: not American, not a demon hunter with a flamethrower, but a scruffy, chain smoking con man from working class England who deals with demons, angels and the various horrors in between by being cleverer and more ruthless than they expect. He lies. He manipulates his friends into danger and feels genuinely terrible about it afterwards. He wins fights he has no business winning because he's read the fine print on the universe and everyone else hasn't.
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The Reeves film moved him to Los Angeles and smoothed off most of those edges, and it's not nothing, I have a soft spot for it, but it's not really him. There was also a short lived 2014 TV series that leaned closer to the comics but didn't last. This would be the character's first live action outing since then, and the first time DC has had a proper go at the version people who actually read Hellblazer have been waiting decades for.
Why Francis Galluppi is the interesting part
Galluppi isn't an obvious blockbuster name yet, and that's exactly why this is interesting. His 2023 debut feature, The Last Stop in Yuma County, got attention for being sharp, nasty and confident in a way that felt indebted to Tarantino without copying him outright. Off the back of that, Warner Bros gave him Evil Dead Wrath, which Dread Central notes is booked into cinemas for 7 April. Handing him Constantine next suggests DC wants someone who can make a film feel dangerous and a bit grubby rather than glossy, which is exactly the tone this character needs and has never quite had on screen.
Dread Central's report places this inside DC's wider genre focused push under James Gunn, following the same instinct that led to the recent Clayface film. That's a pattern worth watching. Rather than every DC property getting the same tentpole treatment, the horror adjacent corners of the universe seem to be getting handed to directors who actually work in horror. For someone who loves this character, that's the right instinct.
What's actually confirmed, and what isn't
To be clear about where we are: a director is attached, and the project is in development at DC. That's it. There's no script confirmed, no casting, no release date, and no studio promise that it will even reach a cinema. Development deals fall over constantly, for reasons that have nothing to do with how good an idea is, so I'm not going to pretend this is locked in. I'd rather tell you honestly where things stand than get your hopes up and have to walk it back in six months.
What I will say is that the combination of this character and this director is the first Constantine news in years that's made me actually sit forward. A proper occult detective film, scruffy and morally compromised and British to his bones, made by someone who's just proved he can do nasty and clever at the same time, is exactly the version of this story I've wanted since I first read the comics.
So here's where I land: cautiously, properly excited, and planning to read every scrap of news on this as it comes. If you've never picked up a Hellblazer comic, this might be the moment to find out what you've been missing before the film eventually turns up. And if you remember the Reeves version fondly, as I do, get ready to meet the version of John Constantine that was always underneath it.
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