While David S. Goyer has promised that NBC’s Constantine TV show will remain more much faithful to the comics than the previous Keanu Reeves-headlined movie, it appears that Matt Ryan’s (Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior) supernatural detective will have to quit the cigarettes, with pilot director Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones) revealing that television network regulations will prevent him from lighting up.
“No we’re not [having him smoke,” Marshall tells Collider. “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.”
Marshall also confirmed that the pilot episode makes no reference to Constantine having any form of cancer, before going to to work in the the dark tone of the comic books despite airing on NBC:
“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.”
Originally published June 30, 2014. Updated December 13, 2019.
