Constantine Series Happening And Recasting Him As A Person Of Color
DC is moving forward with a Constantine series and is rumored to be casting a BIPOC lead.
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John Constantine has had many iterations over the nearly 40 years of the character’s history. throughout various forms of media, the lackadaisical sorcerer has found himself in a number of different scenarios. In addition to his comic book origins, he has been played by Keanu Reeves in an excellent feature film and by Matt Ryan in a few different television series. The character clearly has some serious appeal to fans and DC has been trying to figure out what the next best move with the character would be. Well, it sounds like there has been a major development and it is one that could add a brand new element to the character.
The Illuminerdi is reporting that DC is moving forward with a Constantine series for HBO Max and that they will be casting a BIPOC actor in the role. John Constantine has pretty much always been depicted as a white male in his many different versions over the years, so it would be nice to see a non-white actor bring something fresh to the character. According to the report, the production is looking for an actor similar to Riz Ahmed for the part. Ahmed himself would be great in the snarky role but we would like to offer up The Haunting of Bly Manor star Rahul Kohli as a contender for the part.
What is really interesting about this news is that there seems to be a lot of plans in place regarding the character of John Constantine. In addition to this new HBO Max series, we have also heard that Taron Egerton will be playing the character in Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. There have also been rumblings that Keanu Reeves would be returning to the role in a direct sequel to the feature film. Are all these projects with the character in active development? Or have some of them fallen by the wayside? Thankfully, it seems that both Marvel and DC are committed to moving forward with multiverse stories, so it will be totally okay if there are multiple iterations of john Constantine out there in media for consumers. It seems like we are going to be getting used to having different takes on these characters being simultaneously available in movies and television/streaming.
HBO Max definitely seems like they want to take full advantage of their DC library of characters. In addition to a show centered around John Constantine, we know that The Suicide Squad will be getting a spinoff series with John Cena as Peacemaker. There are also rumors going around about multiple Batman projects like Batman Beyond, a Ben Affleck/Jared Leto project, and even a revival of Batman: The Animated Series. They will also be premiering the next season of the animated Harley Quinn series. Clearly, HBO Max is happy to be in the DC Comics business.
The future for John Constantine seems as wild as the character himself. We look forward to seeing just how many versions of the character we will be seeing on our screens in the near future.
