WARNING: The following interview contains spoilers for the animated Constantine: City of Demons - The Movie, available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital October 9.


John Constantine has a brand new animated movie on the way. With actor Matt Ryan (Legends of Tomorrow, NBC's Constantine) reprising the role to give the Hellblazer his signature voice, Constantine: City of Demons - The Movie includes the animated CW Seed series plus around 25 minutes of brand new footage. With an R-rating and no concerns about censoring the dark supernatural character and his world, screenwriter J.M. DeMatteis said the basic foundation of the animated adventure is inspired by Mike Carey and Leonardo Manco's 2005 Vertigo original graphic novel John Constantine Hellblazer: All His Engines.

"We used that as sort of our foundation and then we built our story up from there," the writer explained during the Constantine: City of Demons - The Movie press room at New York Comic Con. "So, if you know the graphic novel you'll see the basic beats that you know from the graphic novel but there's a whole lot of other stuff going on within the story." Carey and Manco's original graphic novel was released the same year as Keanu Reeves' live-action movie, hoping to motivate moviegoers to delve into the character's comic book world. The Vertigo storyline pulled Constantine to Los Angeles to help his best friend, Chas Chandler, when his granddaughter Tricia went into a coma and had her soul taken by the demon Beroul.

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In Constantine: City of Demons - The Movie, DeMatteis' story sees Constantine travel to Los Angeles to help Chas with his daughter, Trish, who has fallen into a coma when her soul was taken by Beroul. While DeMatteis' inspiration from the source material is crystal clear, this isn't a direct adaptation of Carey and Manco's original graphic novel. "We pulled from other Constantine stories," the writer told us. "I pulled a few things from my Justice League Dark run, created some new things and put it all together into a new story."

DeMatteis is certainly no stranger to John Constantine. He co-wrote the 2017 Justice League Dark animated movie, as well as more than a dozen issues of the New 52 run of Justice League Dark. The writer has years and years of experience delving into a massive variety of DC characters (especially in Justice League International), but he did say there is a unique challenge that comes with writing the Hellblazer. "The hardest thing about Constantine is he has this hard shell on the outside. And he's a bastard, and he's manipulative, and he's this and he's that. If a story is going to just focus on that aspect of the character, that's not a story I can write because there's nothing else going on underneath that."

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In explaining what he enjoyed about writing Constantine's animated movie, DeMatteis found it all centered on a character other than the Hellblazer himself. "The thing I really enjoyed about this story is it's about that outer layer of Constantine, and because Chas is there - and Chas is so important to the story -  it gets to the whole other layers of their connection and who he's hiding behind that shell. He has a vulnerability, and in a lot of ways his biggest vulnerability is this guy who is his best friend since they were kids. That allowed the story to open up emotionally in a way that maybe you can't always do with Constantine."

Despite his previous experience with the fan-favorite occult detective, writing Constantine: City of Demons - The Movie gave DeMatteis a chance to delve even deeper into the antihero's psyche. As a result, he promises fans that the movie offers a version of the classic character that rings true to his Vertigo appearances more than his time in the superhero-centric DC Universe.  "This particular story was an opportunity - since it really is very true to the Constantine we knew from the Vertigo era - to really go deep, dark, and psychological and metaphysical. It took me to a whole new level with the character."

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DeMatteis also promised "big, vulnerable, emotional moments" from the animated film, and stated he'd write another Constantine adventure "in a heartbeat." And if given the opportunity to do so (which appears to depend entirely on the film's reception), DeMatteis knows where he'd like the next animated story to go. "The backstory with Astra Logue, which is really sort of the inciting incident, as they say, of his whole career in life; that he lost this girl to that demons all those years before. That's one of the things that's going on with him rescuing Chas' daughter as a way to atone for how he screwed up years before. I would like to see the resolution of that storyline. I think that would be a great story to tell."

Constantine: City of Demons stars Matt Ryan as John Constantine, Damian O’Hare (Hell on Wheels) as Chas Chandler, Laura Bailey (Critical Role) as Trish & Asa The Healer, Emily O’Brien (The Young and the Restless) as Rene Chandler, Kevin Michael Richardson (Family Guy) as Mahonin, Jim Meskimen (Parks and Recreation) as Beroul, Robin Atkin Downes (The Strain) as Nergal, Rachel Kimsey (Justice League Action) as Angela, and Rick Wasserman (Batman: The Killing Joke) as Mictlantecuhtli. The movie will be available on Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray Combo Pack and Digital October 9.