Constantine General Discussion Thread - Part 1

[Specter313]

Though plans to showcase Doctor Fate's helmet in the first season of NBC's "Constantine" were thwarted when the network cut the number of episodes ordered, series Executive Producer Daniel Cerone tells CBR News that another of the DC Universe's iconic items will make its presence known before the season wraps.

"We had such an embarrassment of riches with those comic books," Cerone told CBR with regard to bringing elements from the comics into the television show. "I'm literally just leaving playback right now for episode 12. We utilize a black diamond which has an iconic mythology around that in the DC Universe. We did our version of the black diamond. Yes, we use the mythology as an inspiration for that episode."

The gem, known as the Heart of Darkness in DC Comics continuity, was mined on the planet known as Apokalips as a weapon for the evil New God known as Darkseid. Eventually, a demonic presence known as Eclipso took up residence in the diamond, utilizing human hosts to exert its desires on the population. The synopsis for the episode, titled "Angels and Ministers of Grace," makes no reference to the diamond, nor do any of the characters listed on IMDB directly correspond to any of Eclipso's comics aliases.

Of course, while Cerone's comments are the first time the DC artifact has been called out as having an impact on the show's plot, its existence as part of "Constantine's" mythology was revealed prior to the first episode airing.

"There are a lot of Easter eggs. There's all sorts of things in John Constantine's lair," Goyer told a room full of fans at last year's New York Comic Con. "There are dozens of them that are little trinkets that you'll find in the DC Universe. Eclipso's black diamond is in there."

As we mentioned earlier, the most famous of these 'trinkets' is Doctor Fate's helm, which has been teased since Liv picked it up in the pilot episode. And while nothing will come of it in the truncated first season, it was planned for the show to dive into its mythology. "We were utilizing the helmet -- there wasn't a Fate appearance planned in that episode. We had a big storyline built around the helmet," Cerone told CBR. "We've all been playing around with, 'Okay, what does the helmet do and how do we use it?' Once we shot the pilot, it would have been wrong to show it and not use it. It was always our intention to play it off by the end of the season."

For more on what to expect from the final episodes of "Constantine's" first season, and what had to be cut due to the shortened order, check out our full interview with Daniel Cerone.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=58907

 

[yonny616]

If NBC does drop the show which network would you like it to go to? I think SyFy would be a good network for it. I mean, if you've seen Being Human you'd know they'd handle the property just fine. Maybe allow for an even darker take than what we're getting on NBC.

 

[Sawyer]

Jeremy Davies.

 

[chamber-music]

This show seems to be hitting its stride. Last nights episode was really good. I hope NBC gives it another season even if it only another 13 episode one.

SyFy and BBC America seem like solid picks if NBC don't want to give the show another season.

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

I really enjoyed this past Friday's episode.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

SPIDEY watches Constantine?

 

[chamber-music]

Executive producer DANIEL CERONE explains why some of the early episodes were kind of weak and why the show is now finding its footing.

The last few weeks, you've had the fans pretty happy because there's been so much coming fairly straight from the pages of Hellblazer. Is that just something where you had to establish your identity first?

Yes. I think the more time that we all collectively spent with this material, talking about it and exploring it creatively, the more natural it was to migrate closer to the comic book stories that we all fell in love with. One thing I would hope the viewers understand but they might not is that when you're starting a TV show, there are so many captains that are involved -- so many voices and partners. And it's incumbent on you to honor all those people. So as the co-creator of the show with David, I might have my own take, David Goyer has his own take, the network definitely has their own idea of what they want the show to be, as does the studio, and then there's the original source material. One of the biggest challenges in the beginning is to find a show that is giving everyone what they want and expect. Once you get on the air and you prove yourself, you generally get a lot more freedom. A lot of people have been talking about how after the first few episodes the show has found its stride and it's been getting stronger and it's staying closer to the comic book and that's not a coincidence because at that point, you gain more trust from your partners and I think that's what you're probably seeing happen onscreen.

The back half of the season has been driven by the discussion about whether the show is coming back and by the fans who are coming together to try and save it. What was going through your minds at this point in production? Were you just feeling good about where you're at with the production itself?

You know, I have weird theories about all that. First of all, and this is sort of an addendum to the last thing I said, I think in the beginning we were a bit more episodic and again, the network was very clear in wanting stand-alone stories every week. But then you get on the air and you start spending time with these characters and getting to know them, you start being able to lean into the serialized storytelling. Frankly, the network and studio all wanted to read as much more about the characters and learn about them as much as the viewers did. So the more time we spent on the air, the more freedom we had to really start digging into the characters' lives and getting to know them and organically, that leads to serialized storytelling. I think if we came out of the gate with those heavily serialized stories...it just wasn't what the network ordered. They entrusted us to start gradually moving in that direction as the season wore on and I feel like we've found a nice balance. We've found a nice balance between you can sit down and watch an episode of Constantine without having seen what came before and enjoy hopefully a good or compelling or scary story with a beginning, middle and end but for the fans, there's also the continuing character arcs and storylines. I will say this: I don't think it's any coincidence that we hit stride with a storyline that was straight from the comic books, which was the hunger demon. And without a doubt, that encouraged us all to dig deeper into the source material.

So the standalone stories were the networks wish.

 

[kguillou]

I don't know why networks still vehemently cling to this dated notion that shows have to be episodic for people to get into them. Have they not learned a damn thing over the past decade where all the best rated, best acclaimed shows have been heavily serialized ( Breaking Bad, 24, LOST, Walking Dead, Revenge, Dexter etc.). Even shows like Gotham, The Flash and Arrow, while they have "villains of the week" there is an overall story that is being pushed forward with each installment and adding a new piece to the puzzle. People these days want to be engaged in a tv show and need to have a reason to tune in the next week. When you make shows episodic there is no urgency, no sense of "Damn I can't wait to see what happens next week!" or "Damn, now I gotta catch up on the episodes I missed!"

These networks still don't get it, they keep thinking they're gonna alienate viewers if they don't do easily accessible standalone episodes but they're also not giving those same viewers a real reason to tune in to the next episode either. If there's no story or cliffhanger to hook them then what's the point? Heck, even in the case of NBC, when they had HEROES, that show was INSANELY popular in its first and second seasons because it had a heavily serialized story that kept you guessing what was going to happen next. Unless you are a CBS sitcom or some offshoot of Law and Order, episodic television does not work anymore.

 

[Jason Kane]

I don't know why networks still vehemently cling to this dated notion that shows have to be episodic for people to get into them. Have they not learned a damn thing over the past decade where all the best rated, best acclaimed shows have been heavily serialized ( Breaking Bad, 24, LOST, Walking Dead, Revenge, Dexter etc.). Even shows like Gotham, The Flash and Arrow, while they have "villains of the week" there is an overall story that is being pushed forward with each installment and adding a new piece to the puzzle. People these days want to be engaged in a tv show and need to have a reason to tune in the next week. When you make shows episodic there is no urgency, no sense of "Damn I can't wait to see what happens next week!" or "Damn, now I gotta catch up on the episodes I missed!"

These networks still don't get it, they keep thinking they're gonna alienate viewers if they don't do easily accessible standalone episodes but they're also not giving those same viewers a real reason to tune in to the next episode either. If there's no story or cliffhanger to hook them then what's the point? Heck, even in the case of NBC, when they had HEROES, that show was INSANELY popular in its first and second seasons because it had a heavily serialized story that kept you guessing what was going to happen next. Unless you are a CBS sitcom or some offshoot of Law and Order, episodic television does not work anymore.

Even that's falling on its backside in lieu of noted key cast departures in the last four years (Meloni, Belzer and Florek) and some fans have not keen on current SVU/former-CI showrunner Warren Leight (and his partner in crime Julie Martin) for some time giving the creative output.

The more people flock to Netflix, Amazon Prime and cable, the future of the five broadcast networks shrink slowly to where it may fade to join Dumont, The WB, and UPN (merge or no merge) in TV purgatory

 

[kguillou]

Exactly, dude. In this day and age its all about Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO on Demand etc. People actually ENJOY catching up with shows that their friends recommend to them or that they've heard from WOM. Breaking Bad became a HUGE phenomenon because the WOM was so strong and people would catch up by marathoning it on Netflix. You absolutely, positively HAVE to hook people with a story from the get go and give them a reason to want to immediately "press play" on episode 2..and 3...and so on and so forth.

 

[venom892]

I just watched all of the episodes of Constantine and I'm ashamed I didn't jump on sooner, the pilot was a bit weak(mostly because of the the lead actress.) but as the show runner said once it hits the hunger demon episode the show and it's lead continue to get better. I hope this at least gets another season as I'd hate for the brujeria and Resurrection crusade story lines to go unresolved.

 

[CaptainCraig]

I've not seen an article, maybe one didn't happen, about the ratings from this past Friday and how they fared vs last week? Where we now stand in the guessing game of renewal or not?

 

[yonny616]

I've not seen an article, maybe one didn't happen, about the ratings from this past Friday and how they fared vs last week? Where we now stand in the guessing game of renewal or not?

It's most likely gone and that's sad.

If it does survive the I think NBC will either move it to a different night or move it to sister channel, SyFy. The show gets 3+ million live viewers per episode, so it does have a great amount of potential

 

[famicommander]

I've not seen an article, maybe one didn't happen, about the ratings from this past Friday and how they fared vs last week? Where we now stand in the guessing game of renewal or not?

The Live+SD rating was a 0.8, down from 0.9 the week before.

Live viewership was 3.29 million, from 3.47 million the week before.

Source: tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/constantine-season-one-ratings-34484/

It's not a "guessing game" as to whether or not NBC will renew the show and it hasn't been for a very long time. The show was all but doomed when it posted a 0.9 in week 2, but the nail in the coffin was when NBC declined to pick up a back nine order of episodes. No fall show in history has been renewed after the network passed on the back nine (unless the show was planned as a short first season in the first place, which Constantine was not).

The L+3, L+7, OnDemand, streaming, international, and paid download numbers are all borderline irrelevant as to whether NBC will renew the show or not. They don't own the IP so they aren't going to get much revenue from anything except TV advertisements, and most TV advertisers still use the Nielsen ratings to make decisions about where to spend money. They may mention those numbers in press releases, but that's because a PR person's job is to spin news.

These numbers are what MIGHT (and I stress MIGHT) convince a cable network or streaming service to take a chance on the show. It's doubtful at this point, but I've said all along that if someone saves the show it'll probably be Amazon.

And before Jason Kane has a cow and posts the same nonsense he always does, this is the last time I will address this matter on this forum. You don't have to worry about seeing me say, "I told you so."

 

[Jason Kane]

I've not seen an article, maybe one didn't happen, about the ratings from this past Friday and how they fared vs last week? Where we now stand in the guessing game of renewal or not?

3.30M (0.8)

Quid Pro Quo's L+3's: 4.6M (1.4)

 

[CaptainCraig]

Thanks

It's too bad that this is happening to Constantine. Such solid potential based on how things have been going the last half dozen episodes or so.

 

[Mirals]

Yep ... Hannibal got the chance to have a second season and now a third season(I hope it will continu so that Bryan Fuller can show us his vision of the whole story).
I hope something similar will happen to Constantine. Really. It's a great serie, Matt Ryan is excellent.

 

[O'Haire]

When it comes to Hannibal, I'm sure it's still around mainly because NBC splits the bill with someone else. So the cost for them is very low.

 

[yonny616]

When it comes to Hannibal, I'm sure it's still around mainly because NBC splits the bill with someone else. So the cost for them is very low.

This and it's also critically acclaimed.

 

[KillerWolf]

And you just don't say "no" to Mads Mikkelsen. It's not the kind of face you say "no" to.

 

[squeekness]

This and it's also critically acclaimed.

I admit that I like Hannibal quite a bit more than Constantine.

 

[chamber-music]

Hannibal looks like it has far higher production values than Constantine.

 

[Jason Kane]

And you just don't say "no" to Mads Mikkelsen. It's not the kind of face you say "no" to.

Other wise you'd get the chair and rope knot to the balls

 

[squeekness]

At minimum a hunk of glass to the throat.

 

[Primal Slayer]

So now the latest rumor that Syfy is interested in picking up the show if it gets cancelled.