What If You Hate What They Make?

Great news over the weekend: they're making a Constantine sequel, and Keanu Reeves is signed on to play the lead role.

I may or may not have made an involuntary eep noise when I read that, like a very tiny, adorable fart. I make no apologies for producing silly noises.

The original Constantine was a freaking delight: a grim, grimy, vicious little beast of a movie. It was preposterous and gruesome and darkly funny, with zero fucks given for your opinion.

The cast alone was incredible. Keanu as the title character, a freelance necromancer in a black suit battling cancer; Rachel Weiss, as the sceptical cop immersed in a world of demons and angels; Tilda freaking Swinton as a besuited Angel Gabriel who birthed a thousand queer fantasies; and of course, Peter Stormare, playing the single best on-screen Satan ever.

It's a classic. No ifs, ands, or buts. The casting is superb, the storyline tremendous, and it's a movie with a surprising amount to say about religion, fate, and morality (I'm not the only one who thinks this). If you haven't seen it, go stream it, and thank me later.

Maybe the sequel will be a disaster. These things sometimes are. There's a chance Warner Bros. could try force him into the DCEU, which will Not End Well.

But unlike Constantine himself, I do have a little faith that things will turn out all right.

Constantine is based on Hellblazer, a comic by Alan Moore, and the comic version of John Constantine is a blond, trenchcoat-wearing Brit (as opposed to Reeves' Los Angeles-based version). Yes, he smokes and snarks and fights demons, but the movie character is still quite different. It is the rare example of Hollywood diverging from the source material and creating something new and fascinating.

Moore hated the movie, going as far as to insist his name be struck from the credits. He's famous for despising any adaptation of his work (while, it must be pointed out, not exactly refusing the residual cheques).

Moore, of course, is entitled to feel however he wants. But you have to wonder if he's aware of just how loved the movie is. How many fans have been drawn to the comics as a result. How does that make him feel? Has he watched it? Does he really look at Swinton's Gabriel, or Stormare's delightfully twisted, entertaining, scenery-chewing Satan, and go, "Nah, it's fucking bollocks"?

I don't know the answer to these questions of course, and I suspect the famously cantankerous Moore wouldn't answer them. What I have been wondering is, what would I do if someone took my work and made something wildly divergent, that I really didn't like...only the fans loved it?

The Frost Files/Teagan Frost TV show is slowly coming together (more news as I have it, but things are moving) and while I completely trust the people I'm working with, it's always a possibility they go way off the map.

Maybe they turn Teagan into, I don't know, an Australian data scientist with a pet dragon and a drinking problem. I would probably hate that. But how would I react if people fell head over heels for it, as they did with Constantine?

I'd probably be...fine with it? After all, what happens in the TV version doesn't change the books, which as far as I'm concerned, are the original text here. They are the primary lens on the world I've created.

I've always believed that no creative enterprise is sacred; once it's out in the world, with readers or viewers, you have zero control over how it's perceived. Why should I claim that any resultant work has to hew to my vision for the character?

Someone else interpreting that world differently would be interesting. If I didn't like what they'd done, I'd say so...but I would try to acknowledge the people who created it, and the work they put in to realise their vision.

I definitely wouldn't be shy about saying the books were different—I'd make lots of noise about that, so I didn't get aggrieved emails from new readers demanding to know where the pet dragon is. But I certainly wouldn't want my name taken off the credits.

And you best believe I'd cash those cheques.

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