Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams' Production Studio, Will Take 'Constantine' And 'Madame X' Elsewhere After HBO Max Passes On The Shows
Image Source: Nerdist
It’s not quite a “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us” situation, but it sure feels like it. HBO Max has passed on the next TV iteration of John Constantine, as well as ‘Madame X’, a Madame Xanadu series. The two series are standalone from one another.
The Constantine series had been announced in development in February 2021 but had been in development for about six months before then. It may well have been the cause of writing the Arrowverse’s depiction out of Legends of Tomorrow and shifting his actor Matt Ryan to a specially-created character Gwyn Davies. Both it and Madame X come from Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams’s production company, making him an executive producer. The Constantine series is being written by British writer Guy Bolton, and Madame X had Angela Robinson executive producing and set to serve as showrunner. The shows will be shopped around to other streamers and networks, befalling it the same fate as Batman: Caped Crusader, Merry Little Batman, two Looney Tunes movies, and two other projects, amidst all the chaos since the formation of Warner Bros. Discovery. The amount of live-action DC shows on the service was apparently deemed too many, and so they “moved on”.
And then there’s the other part of the “both” referred to earlier: On this same day this project was halted at its original development home, a sequel to the 2005 Constantine film starring Keanu Reeves was announced, with Reeves and director Francis Lawrence returning, and Abrams also executive producing. Is it as egregious as the fate of Task Force X on Arrow with the 2016 film looming? No, at least this project is still alive and the two can coexist. One can only hope that it’s a stronger coexistence than Superman & Lois and the limbo that Henry Cavill’s Superman has fallen into. The number of homeless HBO Max-born projects sure is piling up.
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Source: Deadline