‘Constantine’ Writer Reveals The Sequel Was Once Shelved In Favor Of A New ‘Swamp Thing’ Movie
JB Augustine
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The Saga of Swamp Thing in Hollywood is a pretty tempestuous affair. Warner Bros. always seems open to doing something with the mossy monster, but when they produce something, either the audience does not show up or WB pulls the plug for unknown reasons.
That was the case with the 2019 TV series and it appears whatever plans JJ Abrams had vis-a-vis Justice League Dark suffered the same fate.
Other attempts were made over the years, however half-hearted, including ones we haven’t heard of previously. In 2005, for instance, a request was made for a new Swamp Thing script by Constantine writer Frank Cappello which interestingly was penciled in as a replacement for the initially canceled sequel to the Keanu Reeves film.
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“After Constantine released and didn’t do as well as the studio wanted, they had to cancel my contract on writing an official Constantine 2. They offered me two alternates and one was Swamp Thing. Now if you know the Constantine/Hellblazer world, Alan Moore wrote the original Swamp Thing and that was where John Constantine was first seen. So once I saw that I decided to pick Swamp Thing to write,” Cappello said in a Reddit AMA.
Wanting Constantine in his script, he had to get clever. “”I wrote it as a metaphysical horror film and wanted to put Constantine in it but [I] was not allowed for legal reasons. So I invented a character that had the same vibe as JC and called him Mr ‘E’,” Cappello explained.
Sadly it was not to be, particularly because of creative differences with producer Joel Silver who envisioned something more like the largely forgotten 90s basic cable series starring Dick Durock.
“That was a Joel Silver production and it never got made. Probably because Mr Silver wanted a giant talking plant man like the cheesy TV series and my draft was based on the darker cool world that Alan Moore originally did,” Cappello continued.
It’s a screenplay he hopes to show everyone someday. “I wish I could leak that script out so people could see how cool that film would have been,” he said.
Constantine 2 is in development after almost two decades with Keanu Reeves and Frances Lawrence returning, while Akiva Goldsman is penning the script. There have been few updates concerning its progress, but it is believed to be going forward as an Elseworlds movie.
Swamp Thing is getting one more chance too in a stand-alone film set in James Gunn’s DCU directed by James Mangold. How Mangold got the gig is simple, says Gunn: the Dial of Destiny director asked for it.
“Well, for starters, James actually expressed his interest to me (Guillermo, who I know and love, did not),” Gunn answered on Threads.
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