Bastard In Charge: Guillermo del Toro Confirms Constantine To Lead Dark Universe

We appear to have our Internet and cable issues resolved here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives headquarters, after a long and exhausting weekend digging around in wiring… and we recovered our connectivity just in time for Wondercon to be over. Which means that there is a ton of news that even we need to catch up on, and, having quickly scanned our RSS feeds, it only proves that it would have been smarter and better for us to just catch a Goddamned plane to Wondercon, because not only would we have first-person news to report, but at least our hotel would have had fucking Wi-Fi.

But we couldn’t let the Wondercon weekend slip by without reporting on at least something from the convention, and this is the main item that caught our eyes once we had full Internet: Guillermo del Toro held a panel for his upcoming movie Pacific Rim during the convention, and, as one would expect at a comic convention panel where they hold a Q & A session, someone asked del Toro about his reports that he’s working on Dark Universe – a movie focusing on pretty much all the big Vertigo / DC Dark characters.

Now, what one wouldn’t expect is that a director would say anything at all about a roject in pre-production, particularly at a panel about his latest movie that isn’t even out yet. However, this is Guillermo del Toro we’re talking about, and as the director of Blade II and both Hellboy movies, it’s safe to say that he’s one of us, which means he’s probably as excited about the concept of a Justice League Dark movie as the rest of us are.

While is a long way to go to say that: yeah, del Toro let a couple of things about Dark Universe slip.

Mainly, del Toro confirmed that the lead character of Dark Universe will be John Constantine. Now, considering all the reports that Warner Bros. is trying like mad to get Henry Cavill or Christian Bale or somebody known for playing one of DC’s character to agree to reprise their roles in the Justice League movie, one might get a sinking feeling and start thinking that del Toro might be contemplating rehiring Keanu Reeves to play Constantine again, but no: reportedly del Toro confirmed that his John Constantine will be blonde… although he apparently would not confirm that his Constantine will be British. Cue Vertigo purist freakout in three, two, one…

Anyway, del Toro said that he has written a bible for the movie, and that it will start out with Constantine rolling around the landscape, recruiting the other characters (which were previously reported to include Swamp Thing, Etrigan and Zatanna), which should give some opportunities to see them in action before facing whatever the Big Bad winds up being. Further, del Toro reportedly reiterated that he has already found a writer for the screenplay, and that he’s hoping to make an announcement about who that is sooner rather than later.

All of which sounds promising that this project might actually come to fruition, but let’s all take a breath and remember that del Toro’s adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness was also in pre-production, and also had Tom Cruise – an A-List actor – attached, and also wasn’t a movie starring characters played by Keanu Reeves and a dude in a rubber suit who got pawed by Adrianne Barbeau, and that movie got spiked. So there is still plenty of time for Dark Universe to shit itself, roll over and die.

But for now, it seems to live, and to be the best chance we currently have to see a decent version of Constantine and Swamp Thing on the big screen. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that it gets made… or barring that, that when the word comes that it is spiked, that our Internet is down again so we don’t hear about it.

(via Bleeding Cool)