Keanu Reeves’ John Constantine was supposed to team up with Swamp Thing in a Constantine 2 that was never made.
Keanu Reeves has gained a reputation for two of his most iconic characters: his time in The Matrix as Neo and his work as John Wick. One work of his that gets lost in the mix but isn’t less memorable is his time as John Constantine in the DC Universe. Constantine extremely disappointed its fans when this led to nothing, considering just how iconic the character is in the comics.
Keanu Reeves in Constantine
It would seem that audiences weren’t the only ones who were upset at this film’s failure, as DC Studios had very big plans. The writer for the 2005 project revealed that another DC character who is very closely linked to Reeves’ character was supposed to be a part of his story. This was none other than Swamp Thing.
Frank Cappello, the writer for Keanu Reeves’ Constantine, published a Reddit AMA titled How I Wrote Constantine: A Journey to Hell and Back. The perfectly titled video and post detailed all of the behind-the-scenes information that not many were aware of. One of these things that was detailed in this was the fact that the iconic character, Swamp Thing was supposed to feature in a Constantine 2, which never managed to see the light of day.
“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,’” Cappello said. “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.”
Swamp Thing and John Constantine are very closely related in the DC comics. The sorcerer and magician made his first appearance in the DC universe in the comic, Swamp Thing #37, which was written by comic book legend Alan Moore. This is why an onscreen team-up of these two characters is all the more iconic, with a lot of hardcore fans adoring the fan service.
Keanu Reeves’ Constantine’s Failure Did Not Allow The Swamp Thing Project to Materialise
As much as fans would have loved seeing Swamp Thing and John Constantine interacting on screen, unfortunately, this never happened. This is because DC let go of the plan they had surrounding the character after the film had an underwhelming performance. While earning $221 million at the box office with a budget of $71 million is no small feat, it was not enough to save the Keanu Reeves series.
Keanu Reeves as John Constantine
“So I invented a character that had the same vibe as JC and called him Mr ‘E’. That was a Joel Silver production and it never got made,” Capello wrote. “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. I wish I could leak that script out so people could see how cool that film would have been.”
Frank Cappello did, however, talk about what this potential film could have been like, explicitly saying that it would have had a feel similar to that of the Alan Moore classic. Speaking passionately about how he wrote the character as someone who understood them, he added that he seriously wished that he could leak the script for this film, simply so that people could understand how fantastic it could have been.