Francis Lawrence has "renewed hope" for a Constantine sequel following James Gunn and Peter Safran's departure from DC Studios.

The director and star Keanu Reeves have previously spoken of their desire to make a follow-up to the 2005 comic book horror movie, and the filmmaker is feeling more optimistic about the project's potential after it was announced earlier this week that Jeremy Latcham will be taking over as president and chief executive officer, because he suggested the outgoing co-chairs had been an "impediment" to the film.

Francis told Collider: "Not that I want anybody to lose their jobs, so 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.

"So, we are now more hopeful as of yesterday's news that maybe now there will be another opportunity.

"But again, we've been trying to make this for 20-something years, and there's always been obstacles in the road to making it, and it's not me, it's not Keanu, it's not Akiva. J.J. [Abrams] is on it, as well. We all want to do it.

"So, it's really going to be people at Paramount, Warner, whoever's running DC now, getting everybody on board to say, like, 'Hey, we can do a sequel of our version of Constantine.'"

The filmmaker noted that if DC wanted to do another version of Constantine for its "shared universe", they could coexist.

He added: "So, I have renewed hope as of yesterday that there might be some possibility for forward movement there."

Earlier this year, Keanu admitted there have been attempts to bring a sequel to life "for over a decade".

He told Inverse: "We've been trying to make this film for over a decade, and we just recently put a story together and pitched it to DC Studios and they said, 'OK.'

"So, we're going to try and write a script."

Constantine tells the story of the titular exorcist and demonologist who helps LAPD policewoman Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) investigate her twin sister's mysterious suicide, only to discover that fallen angels from Hell are trying to enter the human world.

Francis had teased that a sequel was "closer than ever", insisting that they have had a "great idea" for the movie.

He told Collider: "We have gone through a bunch of the comics over the years and looked at things."

Despite some positive updates, Peter Stormare - who played Lucifer in the original movie - claimed last year that the John Wick star is "not happy with the scripts" so far.

Speaking with The Direct, he said: "It's a lot of back and forth, because ... I think Keanu, which I know pretty good, is not so happy with the scripts and usually what comes out of the studios.

"Because the first one wasn't that successful in the beginning, it became a sleeper and became a cult movie, and now it is one of the biggest cult movies ever.

"But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes."

Stormare added that the John Wick star believed a Constantine sequel should be "spiritual", and was worried the follow-up would diverge from this concept in favour of focusing on action.

He explained: "I think Keanu says, 'I've done John Wick. This movie is spiritual. It's about demons and regular people. And I wanted to keep it that way.'

"And we talked about that. I want to do God coming down exactly the same way, but in a black suit and looking more or less like Lucifer from the first one.

"I'm 12 years older, so it's going to be hard to, you know, completely imitate the first movie.

"But, I think from Keanu, he wants to do a sequel that is very close to the first one."