One of the most notable character traits about Constantine is going to be absent when he makes his TV debut this October. Collider recently caught up with Constantine director Neil Marshall and asked a couple questions about the upcoming DC show. It was revealed some time ago that the show’s producers were trying to negotiate with NBC to allow Matt Ryan’s John Constantine to continue his long practiced hobby of chain smoking, but Marshall announced NBC indeed rejected them.
Marshall said the following:
“No we’re not. It’s the one thing, a compromise I guess. On network it’s the one thing you can’t smoke on network. That’s one of his character traits. We’re working around that. We’re trying to get aspects of it in there as much as possible. We’ll see.”
John Constantine has suffered from lung cancer for a long time but figured out a way to rid himself of it by selling his soul to two demons and then proceeded to trick them into curing it. In the show it’s believed that they will refer to Constantine’s smoking addiction by having him wear a nicotine patch. Fans shouldn’t be in too much of an uproar over this decision, especially if the show continues to nail down the rest of Constantine’s habit and characterizations. From what we saw the the series trailer though, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be too much of a problem.
Marshall is still optimistic on keeping the show very dark and not hindered by any other of NBC’s regulations.
“Hannibal is on NBC, and that’s pretty dark and disturbing. Whatever the regulations are, you can be as dark and disturbing as you want and we’re going to go in that direction. The intention is to be as dark and scary as possible with the show. And that was our whole kind of plan going in, to make it scary. So we’re going to explore all kinds of things. But the smoking is very frustrating. Who knows where it will go; where the story will go; where the character will go? There’s still lots of options.”
All we can do is wait until October when the pilot episode will come out and see how the show handles the title character. What do you guys think about the no smoking clause for the show?
Source: Collider
