Former 'Constantine' Showrunner Daniel Cerone On Matt Ryan's Arrowverse Turn

Nobody is more impressed by Matt Ryan's continued success as John Constantine -- a role he will reprise tonight on DC's Legends of Tomorrow -- than Daniel Cerone, the executive producer who oversaw NBC's Constantine.

Cerone, who recently signed on to develop Dark Horse's Mind MGMT for Universal Cable Productions and is currently serving as showrunner on the SyFy/Netflix series called Nightflyers, based on the George RR Martin novella, recently told ComicBook.com that while he is not involved with the current takes on Ryan's Constantine -- live-action or animated -- he is glad that The CW has brought Ryan back in the role.

"I don't know if I've ever seen an actor so completely bring to life an established comic book character as Matt Ryan did for John Constantine," Cerone said. "Between the NBC series and his subsequent appearances on CW, it would feel strange to see or hear anyone else in that role at this point."

Fans of Cerone's short-lived NBC series will likely enjoy tonight's episode of Legends of Tomorrow, which feels more like an episode of Constantine than the character's previous role on Arrow did, without losing Legends' own unique identity.

"It did feel like a Constantine episode in a way," Ryan said. "Getting to do the exorcisms again is great because in the Arrow episode there's only a little bit of the spells anythings, and there was quite a bit of that [in Legends] and it did feel like he was driving the episode. It was surprisingly darker than I thought it was going to be, which was great. I thought the tone of it was quite dark compared to what I've seen of previous episodes. I thought that was great, and that Constantine fitted right into that."

Constantine's own background, both from the comics and from Cerone's series, will inform the episode, as well, which may give fans some ideas about what CW Seed's Constantine animated series might hold when it debuts later this year.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow airs on Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, beginning tonight and running through April, when the season concludes and Supergirl returns to take over the time slot.