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With The Release Of The ‘Constantine’ TV Series On Blu-Ray, Is Warner Bros. Testing The Waters For The Return Of The Show?

By Daniel Ketchum
Published on: 14:35 PST, Sep 25, 2016

With the announcement by Warner Bros. that it would release the Constantine TV series on Blu-ray, fans of the short-lived series about a chain-smoking dabbler in the occult will get the chance to enjoy the few episodes that were produced in all their high-definition glory. But is there a possibility that this is a test by the studio to see if a Constantine series is worth a second try?

As reported by Inverse, a branch of Warner Bros. known as Warner Archive dropped hints about the release of this Constantine Blu-ray collection earlier in the month, and we now know that it will be coming out in mid-October. While fans can’t wait, they are hoping for much more.

Unfortunately, there are many things suggesting that Matt Ryan’s Constantine will not be returning to his own series on TV anytime soon. For one thing, the studio viewed the series as a financial failure, and few things turn off studio executives more than losing money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4s7vamqQ04

But there’s also the fact that Warner Bros. is currently using the character of Constantine in other media and in other ways. For instance, the studio plans to release an animated version of Justice League Dark next year. While they have made use of the voice talent of Matt Ryan in this animation, this doesn’t mean anything more than that the studio recognizes fans will like it.

An even bigger obstacle to the return of the Constantine TV series was reported by Collider in August of this year. After years of debate and struggle to find a director, Warner Bros. studio has decided to move forward with a feature film production based on the Justice League Dark characters and comic book material.

With the millions of dollars involved in such a venture, the studio might be very reluctant to allow the return of an already failed TV series that might further tarnish the image of the principal character in their new movie. The safe play for the studio would be to ensure that Matt Ryan’s Constantine never appears in anything but animation or CW cameos again.

On the other hand, it’s also true that until this year Warner Bros. had placed a complete restriction on the use of Superman or Batman in any of the CW series. But along with Supergirl moving to the CW, that series is also seeing the arrival of Superman in the flesh.

Previous episodes of Supergirl had shown Superman as a blur, in the distance or otherwise obscured. By casting an actor to play the role full-time or even occasionally on Supergirl, Warner Bros. seems to be signaling a change in their recent policies against having two versions of the Superman character in the movies and on TV.

Of course, the first time this happened in the recent DC/Warner Bros. universe was with The Flash TV series. In this case, the character of the Flash appeared on TV – incredibly successfully – long before anyone was cast to play the character in a movie. Another point that could be made in favor of a return of the Constantine TV series is that the initial pilot and set up of the show was so badly handled that it threw the first few episodes entirely off-track.

Matt Ryan as Constantine. [Image by Warner Bros]

The replacement of the female lead in the initial pilot and the decision to keep that episode without re-filming it with the new actress was a terrible mistake. It’s safe to assume that if Warner Bros. were to allow the return of the Constantine TV series to network TV, it would be handled in a slightly less ham-handed way than it was the first time.

More than this, the reaction of the committed fans who stayed with the series into its much better later episodes and the cult following the series has developed since then might indicate to Warner Bros. that it’s worth giving the character a second shot on TV. Given these facts, there is just the slimmest hope that Warner Bros. might change its mind and allow for a Matt Ryan version of Constantine on TV and another version of the character in the films.

[Featured Image by Warner Bros]

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