Production Companies Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, DC Comics (Vertigo), Lonely Film Productions GmbH & Co. KG., Donners' Company, Branded Entertainment/Batfilm Productions, Weed Road Pictures, 3 Art Entertainment, Di Bonaventura Pictures
“This is a man who walks both sides, light and dark,” Shuler Donner describes the complex title character. “He’s not evil; the life he took, after all, was his own. But he’s not all good either. Deep inside, I think he’s just a guy who’s had a very hard life and yet he’s smart enough to have a sense of humor about it, which is one of the reasons we wanted Keanu Reeves because we knew he could pull that off. He can strike those balances and give us the sense of depth that defines Constantine.”
“He’s fighting the system,” adds Erwin Stoff, Constantine producer and Reeves’ longtime professional collaborator. “John Constantine clearly doesn’t want to go to hell but he believes it’s his actions that should decide his fate, not someone’s technical reading of the rules. He’s a guy who, above all, cannot tolerate unfairness and hypocrisy and it’s the unfairness and hypocrisy he observed early in his life as well as his current situation that has hardened him to the degree that he is.”
Stoff felt so strongly about the Constantine script that he forwarded it to Reeves while the actor was in Sydney on production for The Matrix Revolutions and his instincts proved correct. “He fell in love with the character,” Stoff recalls. “He liked that fact that even though this had the potential to be a great, fun, epic-scale movie with amazing effects, at its center was a story about a man’s struggle with hypocrisy, with good and evil, and with what’s wrong in the world.”
Adds Melniker, “This is a unique individual who defies description. There’s an enduring mystery about him. It’s not commonplace; it’s not likely that people will say, ‘I’ve seen this before.’”
Uslan, whose youthful passion for comic books led to an early job writing for genre fanzines and a lifetime of avid collecting, believes that familiarity with the graphic novels is not a prerequisite to enjoying the screen story or appreciating the punch of Constantine’s personality for the first time. Having watched the character evolve for years in print he feels the film captures its essence in ways that count the most: namely, “mood, attitude and point of view. One of the great things about this story and these characters is that there is absolutely no black or white. As we learn to our horror, everything in life is gray. No matter how human someone appears there might be demons lurking within. When someone taps you on the shoulder you never know quite what you’re going to see when you turn around.”
Francis Lawrence, known for his award-winning direction on videos for some of the most dynamic acts in the music industry, has developed an expertise for recognizing the vital elements of a story and gauging their visceral impact. A film noir devotee, he says, “it was the character of John Constantine, the anti-hero, and the tone of the story, that attracted me immediately. The world he inhabits is unique and the story moves into places that were entirely unexpected.”
Intrigued, Lawrence researched the source material extensively, developed original sketches and ideas for the project and threw his hat into the ring as the production team was considering directors. He hit them like a bolt of lightning.
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