J.J. Abrams’ Constantine TV series officially scrapped

It was announced several years ago that J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions was developing a new Constantine TV series for Max, but a recent report from Variety confirms that the project has officially been scrapped. I know, not exactly a surprise, but the series got further ahead than you might have thought.

According to the report, the Constantine TV series was far enough along that they were already in talks with an actor to play the leading role before it was scrapped. There had been rumours that Sope Dirisu (Gangs of London) was being eyed to play Constantine, but nothing was ever confirmed. The series would have been set in contemporary London, and four scripts had been written.

While we might not see Constantine on the small screen, Keanu Reeves is still slated to return for the long-belated Constantine sequel. Francis Lawrence will also return to direct the sequel, which is aiming for an R-rating this time around. The WGA strike obviously brought the project to a halt, but Lawrence recently confirmed that it’s back in the works now that the strike has concluded.

“So Constantine 2 got obviously held up by the writers’ strike. And we had to jump through a bunch of hurdles to get control of the character again, because other people had control of the Vertigo stuff,” Lawrence said. “We have control. Keanu and Akiva Goldsman and I have been in meetings and have been hashing out what we think the story is going to be, and there’s more meetings of those that have to happen–the script has to be written–but really hoping that we get to do Constantine 2, and make a real rated R version of it.“

Should Constantine 2 move forward, it likely won’t be part of the new DC Universe being cooked up by James Gunn and Peter Safran, but would fall into the DC Elseworlds banner occupied by Joker: Folie à Deux and The Batman Part II.