“Constantine” at 20: Director Francis Lawrence on his journey from J. Lo videos to Keanu Reeves — and the R-rated sequel

It's hard to imagine that the music video director behind Jennifer Lopez's "Waiting for Tonight," Britney Spears' "I'm a Slave 4 U," and Shakira's "Whenever, Wherever" would go on to make Constantine, one of the most cult-y, horror-adjacent comic book movies of all time.

Francis Lawrence never intended to be a director of music videos. The Austria-born, Los Angeles-raised future filmmaker went to film school at Loyola Marymount University in California and dreamed of doing what he's known for now. At present, Lawrence, 53, is hot off directing his fourth Hunger Games movie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and will soon return to shoot his fifth for the franchise, based on the newly announced prequel book Sunrise on the Reaping. But at the time, he didn't quite know how to get a feature film made, which led him to the music space.

"It gave me about 10 years or so of trying various things out, learning lots of different techniques, working with all sorts of personalities, and just having a lot of shooting under my belt before I stepped onto my first day of shooting a feature," Lawrence, who now has a Grammy for directing Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" visuals, tells Entertainment Weekly in February for the 20th anniversary of Constantine.

The movie, headlining Keanu Reeves as the demon-hunting, angel-gazing "Hellblazer" of DC's Vertigo comics character, "is much more me than, let's say, 'Waiting for Tonight' or 'Slave 4 U,'" Lawrence adds. "I loved making those videos, especially ones where I could build out worlds, but quite honestly, a lot of music I didn't even personally listen to that much."

Related: Constantine sequel with Keanu Reeves still Hellblazing ahead amid new DC slate

Twenty years later, the fan base for Constantine keeps growing. The movie, which is available for the first time on 4K UHD starting today, re-envisioned the London-based occult detective John Constantine as a Los Angeles exorcist who could cross Heaven and Hell and parlay with half-angels and half-demons — a tweak, Lawrence acknowledges, caused them some hell with fans at the time. Rachel Weisz also co-starred as Det. Angela Dodson, a devout Catholic and dormant psychic investigating the apparent suicide of her twin sister.

Despite the stacked cast, which included Tilda Swinton as the androgynous half-breed angel Gabriel, Shia LaBeouf as Constantine's young driver and protégé Chas Kramer, and Djimon Hounsou as witch-doctor-turned-supernatural-nightclub-owner Papa Midnite, the film did not make an impression at the box office. Yet, a cult following formed around the adaptation. And now, finally, Lawrence can develop the kind of sequel he always wanted to make.

"It was one of those weird, strange, beautiful things to see that fan base grow," he comments. "Everywhere I go, people have Constantine DVDs. People still want to talk about it. I'm very happy about that as opposed to people having hated it or forgotten it. That would be awful. The reverse has happened."

Lawrence sits down with EW over Zoom to answer some of our burning questions about the movie for its 20th anniversary.

Related: Keanu Reeves is returning for a Constantine sequel with original director Francis Lawrence

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I dug up an old making-of featurette from the DVD. You discuss how Keanu made a "no music video directors" policy for this film. Do you remember the specifics of your pitch that ended up changing his mind?

FRANCIS LAWRENCE: It was my first movie, and it was a big movie, so it took a long time to get the job. It was about a nine-month process. it started with Erwin Stoff, who was one of the producers, was Keanu's manager at the time, [and] is still my manager now. He had seen my music video reel, thought that I'd be great for the movie, and championed me. I had to pass through the gate of the exec at Warner Bros., but then there was a whole slew of producers. As this was happening, I was building out this big presentation. I had illustrations, poster boards filled with images and references, actors, and all kinds of stuff. Keanu had been in Australia shooting the Matrix sequels, and he was going to be the last meeting. Then the word came that he had told Erwin "no music video guys." But he luckily agreed to meet with me. He landed back in L.A., had a couple days to acclimate. I filled the room with all the poster boards of my presentation and we spent probably 4-5 hours together walking through the movie. [We] had another follow-up at the Chateau Marmont, another 4-5 hour meeting. I think we connected on a personal level. I think he really appreciated my vision for the movie.

One of the most fascinating casting choices was Tilda Swinton. With time, that has only become more interesting as we talk culturally about gender. In early interviews for the DVD release, Tilda would even describe Gabriel using he/him pronouns. What do you remember of wrapping your head around the character of Gabriel and embracing androgyny?

Other than Rachel and Shia, almost every other person that's in the movie in a big way was on my original cast list. Tilda was certainly the person that I wanted to play Gabriel. It was seeing her in Orlando [1992]. I thought this androgynous quality to Gabriel would be great, but also, Tilda is so amazing at what she does, and so amazing to look at, and so charismatic. I do remember that, at the time, everybody was really into it, but we held off on pitching Tilda for a while until we had Rachel and the star power to match Keanu in certain roles. Luckily, Warner Bros. was actually pretty good with all my casting choices at the time, which again was kind of tricky since it was my first movie. She was on my original poster board. So imagine that moment of Keanu walking in and that scene; she was already being pitched at that time.

You were experimenting with an alternate ending that was very similar to what the post-credits scene ended up being. What do you remember about figuring out what you wanted to do for the ending and then how this post-credits scene came up?

There was a little bit of a regime change of executives. The guy that was the president [of worldwide production at Warner Bros.] at the time I became the defacto director on the movie was Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who left the position and became a producer on our movie. I think there were a bunch of people that didn't have much faith in it as a movie. I think they had faith in Keanu because he was starring in the Matrix sequels and thought maybe it was cool. But I was an untested director. So we cut together this sizzle reel during the making of the movie that was about 20-25 minutes long that we showed to the studio to amp them up. They loved it, and it really turned them around. We then showed them a cut of the movie. Part of the reason we did it was we had an ask: we wanted to redo a few things. I was never quite happy with the background and Midnite's Club, and there was some story stuff we wanted to do, and there was a character who we even still ended up cutting out that we wanted another chance at attacking in the movie. One of the things that we wanted to do was this alt piece of the ending where [Constantine] goes to Chas' grave and leaves the lighter. There were some variations there. We ended up just ending the movie on the roof and deciding that that was a post-credit deal. Not many people had done those kinds of post-credit scenes.

A big part of the story of Constantine is trying to get the PG-13 rating.

We didn't get it.

I actually have a copy of that MPAA packet from the studio with the list of things you shouldn't say or do to get the PG-13 rating. It's very detailed and very specific.

Should Constantine be a PG-13 movie? No. But you have a major studio trying to make a very commercial movie and spending $100 million. They want a PG-13 because if it's not, you're leaving money on the table. So sort of understandable, even though it's a bit disingenuous for what the material is. We followed to a T all the rules in terms of sexuality, nudity, blood, gore, violence, swearing, all of that stuff. But the gray zone — and this is something I've battled in many, many of my movies with the ratings — is intensity. As soon as we screened this for the MPAA, they shot it back immediately and said, "We stopped taking notes five minutes in. It's hard R. No notes. No changing our mind." Warner Brothers, of course, and their post [production] guy almost had a heart attack, I think because everybody was expecting the PG-13 and we'd followed the rules. So he went to go argue it. The argument was, this was around Lord of the Rings, and we're thinking, Lord of the Rings is far more violent than this. They said yes, but people think orcs and elves are fantastical, and people think angels and demons are real. Therefore, this is an R. So there was, quite honestly, no fighting it. Had I known we were getting an R, I would've actually made an R-rated version of Constantine, which could have been more intense, could have had some scarier bits. Not that I would go that much more into sort of gore and all of that, but there could definitely have been more intensity and it could have been scarier.

Related: No, Will Smith will not star in The Matrix 5 despite cryptic teaser

That's something you talked about embracing now in developing a Constantine sequel. Where are you at with that?

I will say that the strikes had a little bit of an impact. Quite honestly, we came out of the first [movie] loving the process, not loving the fact that we got an R, but we thought if we're going to get an R, let's embrace that. Let's do the R-rated, scarier version of a Constantine sequel. Then, the problem was with multiple regime changes at Warner Bros., at DC, and the DC characters being tossed around from person to person to person. The big hurdle over these last 20 years has been who has the rights to these Vertigo characters or "DC Dark"? NBC did make a series. We've always gotten held up because they go, "No, we have Constantine. We want to do something with Constantine. You guys can't do your Constantine." Finally, I think this is right before the strikes, we got everybody to say, "Okay, you can go." We just started cooking up some ideas. I will say that we are closer than ever to a Constantine sequel, that there is an idea that Keanu and Akiva and I all really love, and that is being actively developed now.

Is the concept directly related to the first film?

Ish. It's a little bit like when we do these Hunger Games movies now. You want the movies to work on their own, but I think if you have seen the first one or you do know some of the stories, there'll be Easter eggs and connective tissue for you.

Are you directing The Hunger Games: Sunrise of the Reaping first?

Yeah, for sure. There's already a release date for Sunrise of the Reaping. I'm going to be shooting that this year.

During the 15th anniversary panel at Comic-Con, you mentioned discussing sequel ideas when you released the first film. One concept was Constantine meeting Jesus. I have to know more about that concept.

I don't know how fleshed out [that was]. It's so long ago. I know we've batted a bunch of ideas around. I think there might've even been a script at some point, but there was nothing that we had fallen in love with. Even though we had all these hurdles, I think some of what's been good is that there's been enough time for the fan base to grow, but also for all of us to sit with the ideas and the character and think, and all get older, including Keanu, which means Constantine would be older. It's all been good for the ideas. And, yeah, super, super excited about this take, but nothing that I can remember that's in this take came out of those original meetings post-Constantine release.

Have you had conversations with anybody else for the sequel beyond Keanu? Like, Tilda?

No...Not until we land and make sure that it becomes a reality. It's as close as it's ever been. But until it's real, we're not talking to anybody else yet.

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