DC Hires ‘Evil Dead Wrath’ Filmmaker Francis Galluppi to Write a New ‘Constantine.’ Where Does That Leave Keanu?
Twenty-one years after Keanu Reeves flipped off the devil, DC Studios is finally putting a new John Constantine movie on the board, and the first name attached isn't Reeves. According to a Deadline exclusive that spread across the trades on Wednesday night, the studio has hired Francis Galluppi, the writer-director of the upcoming Evil Dead Wrath , to write a Constantine feature. It's in early development, nobody has been cast and DC had no comment when TheWrap asked.
That would be an exciting horror story on its own. It gets messier because a Reeves sequel has been in the works, in theory, since 2022, and none of the reports say what happens to it. So this piece covers what's confirmed, what got garbled in the first wave of headlines, who Galluppi is, how the 2005 movie really performed, and what a horror-minded Constantine could mean for a DC slate that just took a risk on Clayface.
Watch: The Movie That Got Galluppi Hired
There's no footage of a movie that's still a script assignment, so here's the best evidence of why fans should care: the trailer for Galluppi's feature debut, from distributor Well Go USA, followed by Warner Bros.' production tease for Evil Dead Wrath.
The Details: What's Confirmed, and What Got Scrambled
The confirmed list is short:
- The job: Galluppi is writing a John Constantine movie for DC Studios, as Deadline first reported on Nov. 4.
- The stage: Early development, with no other names attached.
- The cast: None announced. Reeves isn't mentioned in the report, according to outlets summarizing it.
- The studio: DC Studios had no comment for TheWrap.
- Release date, rating, budget: None exist yet.
One point worth clearing up: not every outlet tells this the same way. TheWrap and Collider framed the news as Galluppi helming the movie, while iHorror, Cosmic Book News, SuperHeroHype and Screen Rant all describe a writing assignment, with several specifying that no director is on board. We're going with the writing version because that's how most outlets relaying Deadline's report describe it. Could he end up directing? Sure, and hiring the guy who just made an Evil Dead movie suggests that door is open. But nobody has reported that as a done deal.
Who's Behind It: Francis Galluppi
Galluppi, who turns 38 this month, came up through shorts like Palm Drive (2017) and High Desert Hell (2019), and music videos for Mt. Joy. His breakout was The Last Stop in Yuma County , a pressure-cooker crime thriller set around a desert diner, starring Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Richard Brake and Barbara Crampton. It premiered at Fantastic Fest on Sept. 23, 2023, and reached U.S. digital on May 10, 2024.
It's a critics' darling that almost nobody paid to see in theaters: 96% on Rotten Tomatoes from 69 reviews and a 72 on Metacritic, against a $685,184 worldwide gross on a reported $1 million budget. Only $94,344 of that came from North America. It was still enough to catch the eye of the person who mattered most.
That was Sam Raimi, who hired Galluppi in April 2024 to write and direct a new Evil Dead film. Raimi told Deadline he's "a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension." That movie became Evil Dead Wrath , a prequel to the 1981 original set in 1972, starring Charlotte Hope, Jessica McNamee, Zach Gilford, Josh Helman and Ella Newton. It shot in Auckland, New Zealand from Feb. 21 to May 30, 2026, is now in post-production, and opens April 7, 2028 through Warner Bros.
Read that date again. Galluppi's first studio movie is about 17 months away, so DC hired him before anyone has paid to see his work at that scale. Warner Bros. is releasing Wrath , so it's fair to guess someone in that building likes what they've seen. That's a real vote of confidence.
Photo: Sam Raimi via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
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The Backstory: Four Decades of Hellblazer, One Movie
John Constantine first showed up in Swamp Thing #37 in June 1985, created by Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben. He got his own title, Hellblazer , in 1988, and it became the longest continuously published Vertigo series. The character has always been a poor fit for superhero cinema: a chain-smoking English con man who wins by lying to demons and whose friends tend to die.
Hollywood has kept trying anyway. Here's how that's gone:
- 2005: Francis Lawrence's Constantine arrives Feb. 18, with Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Tilda Swinton as Gabriel and Peter Stormare as Lucifer.
- 2012: Guillermo del Toro's Justice League Dark is reportedly in the works. It never happens.
- 2014-15: NBC's Constantine with Matt Ryan runs 13 episodes, from Oct. 24, 2014 to Feb. 13, 2015, and isn't renewed. Ryan carries the role into Arrow , Legends of Tomorrow and animation.
- 2022: Deadline reports a Reeves sequel in September, with Lawrence directing, Akiva Goldsman writing, and Goldsman, J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella producing.
- 2023: Reeves says he's spoken with DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn, with the film planned as an Elseworlds title outside the main DCU.
- 2024-25: A producer says a script is complete in September 2024. In February 2025, Lawrence says they're "closer than ever to being able to do a sequel," and Reeves says he and Lawrence pitched DC a story and got a go-ahead on a script.
- October 2025: Gunn says he's discussed it with Reeves but hasn't read a script.
- October 2026: Comic Basics, citing Deadline, reports the sequel is still in development with no greenlight and no date.
Photo: Matt Ryan via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
By the Numbers
- Constantine (2005): $230.9 million worldwide, $76 million of it domestic, on a reported $70-100 million budget. 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, 50 on Metacritic, B CinemaScore.
- Evil Dead Rise (2023): $147 million worldwide on a budget of up to $19 million.
- Evil Dead Burn (2026): $72.3 million worldwide as of late August on a $20 million budget, 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, B CinemaScore.
- Clayface (2026): About a $40 million budget, more than $90 million worldwide so far per Comic Basics, after a 57% second-weekend drop.
Analysis: What This Really Means
The obvious read is that Keanu's sequel is dead. We don't think the evidence gets you there yet. World of Reel floated unsourced murmurs that Gunn and Peter Safran have killed it, while Screen Rant treats it as still in progress and Cosmic Book News says it's unknown whether Galluppi is writing something fresh or the sequel is changing hands. No trade has reported a cancellation. But here's our honest take: studios don't usually pay a hot horror filmmaker to write a separate movie about the same character for fun. Even if nothing's been formally shut down, this looks like DC building a Plan B, or at minimum no longer waiting on Plan A. Four years with a star, a director and a producer of Goldsman's stature, and no greenlight, says plenty on its own.
The more interesting signal is the choice of writer. Lawrence and Goldsman have talked for years about a darker, harder-R sequel, so scary isn't a new idea. What's new is that DC went to someone with no superhero résumé at all, whose calling card is a low-budget film built on slow dread in one location. Yuma County is about a room full of people waiting for something awful to happen. That is, weirdly, a great instinct for Hellblazer , where the best stories are about a man talking his way out of a bad room and leaving somebody else to pay for it.
Look at the economics, too. Clayface showed DC can make a character-driven horror film for around $40 million and pull in more than double that, even with a steep second-weekend fall. Evil Dead Rise showed how far under $20 million can go. The 2005 Constantine , meanwhile, earned about two-thirds of its gross overseas, but it needed a budget up to two and a half times the size of Clayface and a superstar to do it. A Galluppi version almost certainly lives closer to the first two models than the third, which is the reason it might actually get made when so many Constantine projects haven't.
The risk is real, though. Evil Dead Burn made less than half of what Rise did, so the franchise lift isn't automatic, and Galluppi's only released feature grossed under $700,000. And Reeves has spent two decades as the face of a role fans have turned into a cult favorite. A new Constantine has to survive comparisons to him on top of a comic fanbase that has been asking, with equal volume, for a blond English lead who actually looks like the guy on the page.
What We Still Don't Know
- Whether Galluppi will direct, or only write.
- Whether this sits in Gunn's DCU or stands apart, as the Reeves film was meant to.
- What it means for Constantine 2 , and whether Reeves, Lawrence or Goldsman will say anything publicly.
- Who plays the part. Nobody has been named, so treat any fan-cast headline accordingly.
- Timing. With Evil Dead Wrath not out until April 7, 2028, and Galluppi also reportedly developing a snow-set western, don't expect this one soon.
Bottom Line
This is a writing deal in early development, not a green light, and it doesn't officially kill anything. But it's the first genuinely new idea the Constantine movie conversation has had in years: hand him to a horror filmmaker who likes making audiences wait. If DC wants the character scary rather than cool, that's the right phone call. So we'll ask you the only question that matters. Would you rather see Keanu get his long-promised sequel, or a full reboot from the guy behind Evil Dead Wrath ?
Related on The Horror Feed
Header photo: Keanu Reeves at TIFF 2025 via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped with text added. Reeves played the role in 2005 and is not attached to this project.
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