At this year’s WonderCon, we got to sit down with the people behind CW Seed’s newest animated series, Constantine: City of Demons. The round table interview included John Constantine himself, Matt Ryan (who has played the character on the short-lived NBC series, on Arrow, in Justice League Dark, and on Legends of Tomorrow), series writer J.M. DeMatteis, and Peter Giardri, the vice president of Warner Bros. Animation and Blue Ribbon Content.
We were first joined by DeMatteis, who told us about the process of adapting the specific comic book storyline into the CW Seed series. We asked if there was any great part of the original comic that got left out in the adaptation, and Dematteis said, “No, we got to use a lot of great stuff from that story, a lot of the really weirdest, goriest stuff came right out of it – Beroul with his swimming pool full of decomposing dead bodies, I don’t think I could have ever come up with that one. The graphic novel was a fantastic foundation for this, and then we built out from there and added a lot of elements, both in terms of character and plot, that weren’t in the graphic novel. So if someone is a fan of the graphic novel, they’re gonna get a lot of big beats they know and love from that story, and they’re also gonna get a lot of stuff that they never saw or knew before, which is, I think, what you wanna do with an adaptation.
Next we were joined by Peter Giardri, who said that he tried to push for a lot of dark maturity in the series, so we asked if he thinks City of Demons, as well as other Warner Brothers animation, will open up the door for similarly dark and mature cartoons in the future. “For sure,” he said, “and I think that fans are wanting that a little bit, the maturity of it, the maturity of the writing. And, it’s not only in the ‘oh, there’s blood, and boobs and cursing and smoking,’ it’s in the depth of the writing, of the characters, and how real their problems are and how hard it is to overcome whatever they face. That’s part of the adult nature as well, so we are doing more and more of that.”
Finally, we got to speak with Constantine himself, Matt Ryan. We asked him if he thought that his interpretation of the character has finally found a home in the CW Seed series, as well as his recurring role on Legends of Tomorrow. “I think that the animation is great, because it is a Constantine story, and fans will really be able to enjoy that as a stand-alone thing, and also the fans of the Hellblazer comics will have fun seeing one of the original comics adapted to the animation. And what’s great about doing him on Legends is, how is gonna interact with those guys? What kind of dynamic is it gonna bring to him being on that ship, you know? He doesn’t really work well with a team.” He finished off by saying, “For me it’s all interesting, and I just hope all the fans will enjoy him in these different mediums as well.”
You can watch Constantine: City of Demons now, available exclusively on CW Seed.
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