Justice League Dark: Apokolips War Almost Had a Lot More About Constantine and King Shark's Relationship

In Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, the latest installment in the DC Universe animated shared universe, filmmakers revealed that John Constantine had an intimate relationship with King Shark. Constantine and King Shark's history comes out during a scene in which Constantine, Superman, and Raven visit a club where some of DC's supervillains, including members of the Suicide Squad, hang out. Constantine gets awkward when he notices King Shark is there and says he didn't expect to see his "ex." Raven at first assumes Constantine is talking about Harley Quinn -- right up until King Shark gives the pair a smile and a wink.

While it isn't clear exactly how that relationship fits into the timeline of the Justice League Dark movies, which have seen the bisexual Constantine mostly attached to Zatanna, the reveal was almost a little more elaborate. During an interview with ComicBook.com, executive producer James Tucker said that the idea came up in the writers room, and that when the script came back, it initially had way more Constantine/King Shark story than he felt it needed.

"I can't remember exactly what happened to get to that," Tucker admitted. "We were in a room, and when you're breaking story, it's like making a stew: everyone's cutting up bits and throwing it into the pot. And the bits that get made are often ingredients that multiple people had contributed. Somebody had said something about Constantine's ex, and somebody else said Constantine and King Shark should have had a thing. Or it might have been another character and somebody said, 'oh, maybe King Shark,' the least likely candidate. If it made me laugh in the room, I would say 'yeah, let's go for it.' But then what happened is that the script came in and there was a whole page about them. I was like, 'no, that's too much. Let someone write fan fic about it, but for the movie...the alchemy of writing is that you put in more than you need and then you strip away. So that scene was like a page and a half more than it needed to be."

Ultimately, he said, they actually recorded more than even ended up in the movie, sine even after he cut it significantly, they ended up trimming more back in the editing process to shorten the film's runtime.

Justice League Dark is available now on streaming video on demand platforms. John Constantine can be seen in DC's Legends of Tomorrow, which airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT, following The Flash on The CW