Posted in: Movies | Tagged: entertainment, film, Jay Oliva, john constantine, justice league dark, matt ryan

Matt Ryan's Return To Constantine… Only Animated This Time

Published Sun, 27 Nov 2016 13:15:18 -0600

For fans of the short-lived Constantine television series, any chance to see Matt Ryan reprise the role of John Constantine is something to get excited about. He returned to the magic man for an episode of Arrow and now he's lending his voice to the DC animated movie Justice League Dark.

The film's director Jay Oliva talked to Empire about casting of Ryan and how it was one of the first things he had thought about when he learned of the upcoming film:

Having Matt Ryan was great. When I found out that I was going to be doing Dark, I thought, "This is awesome," and I asked, "Is Constantine in it? Can I get Matt Ryan to do it?" We didn't know whether or not he would do it. We knew that the series had finished. We knew that it might not be coming back, so we weren't sure if Matt would be a little bit too bitter to play this role. Some actors might think it's a step down, doing an animated thing, you know? So we reached out to him, and he said sure. It was one of the easier pieces of the puzzle to cast. And the thing is, he loves the character and I didn't know this until I went to New York Comic-Con and I got to really hang out with him outside of work. He's a really, really cool guy, and here's how cool he was: He was in London, because he lives there, and we were going to just record him from there, we would just rent a studio there and he would go there, and we would direct him from L.A., which is what sometimes we've done for some actors. Matt's, like, "No, I'll come out." I don't think he's ever done voice work before, so he wanted to really be there, just in case. If he was doing a terrible job, he wants to know that he's doing a terrible job. He came out here and did a fantastic job. He was really very gracious, very kind and loved talking about his experiences on the series and how great it is to be playing this character and being known for this character.

But, with Constantine the question always becomes will they get the character right? We get an idea of how Oliva looks at John in his answer about Swamp Thing. There also was once talk of a Swamp Thing animated movie….

Constantine may have been my first question, but Swamp Thing was the second. We were actually kicking around the idea of doing a Swamp Thing direct to video movie years ago, but that never saw fruition. When this came about, it was the perfect opportunity to use him. He and Constantine know each other, but they don't like each other. Then again, not many people like Constantine, because he kind of rubs you the wrong way, you know? He's kind of like Batman in some ways. He's the supernatural version of Batman. Basically Constantine and Batman give zero fucks about anything.

Yeah… I think he's got the character right.

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