CW Seed’s ‘Constantine’ Series To Be Darker Than NBC Series

CW Seed’s upcoming animated Constantine series will be darker than its live-action predecessor on NBC.

Speaking at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour (via Collider) The CW‘s executive vice president Peter Girardi told reporters that the latest series of the animated Arroweverse would steer a little closer to the character’s roots in Vertigo’s “Hellblazer” comics.

“It’s Constantine, if you’re familiar with the character,” Girardi said. “It’s Constantine from the Vertigo comic; it’s dark. Darker than the show.”

Constantine will follow the iconic and fan-favorite character of John Constantine, played by Matt Ryan who is reprising his role from the NBC series which ran from 2014-2015 and, like CW Seed’s other animated Arrowverse offerings has ties to the network’s live-action counterparts. As fans may recall, both Vixen and Freedom Fighters: The Ray have had important moments in the live-action Arrowverse this season. On Legends of Tomorrow, Kuasa (played on television by Tracy Ifeachor,) who was killed on Vixen, is resurrected by a servant of this season’s big bad Mallus to create problems for the Legends — including her grandmother, the original Vixen Amaya (Maisie Richardson-Sellers). Meanwhile The Ray (Russell Tovey) is instrumental in assisting the Arrowverse heroes escape execution by the Nazis in “Crisis on Earth-X.”

As for Constantine, he has already appeared on both Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow — and has a larger appearance when the latter show returns form midseason hiatus in February — but Girardi explained in his talk that just how connected the animated Arrowverse will be to the live-action Arrowverse remains to be seen.

“That’s yet to be determined,” Girardi explained. “The first one we did was Vixen. And Vixen started out as animated. And I think we were all so happy when it did migrate into the Arrowverse, but it started out as animated first. Since then, we’ve figured out a little more of a strategy around it where we worked very closely with Greg [Berlanti] and Marc Guggenheim and the team there to figure out what characters are going to work, what’s in [their] future plans, what we can do.”

Constantine will debut on CW Seed in early 2018.