LEGENDS OF TOMORROW Post-Mortem: The Team on Bringing an Iconic Constantine Story to the ARROWverse

[Spoiler alert! This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, February 18 episode of LEGENDS OF TOMORROW.]

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW is taking on the “Hellblazer” arc “Dangerous Habits.”

In the 1991 run, John Constantine (played on television by Matt Ryan) was struck with lung cancer and had to find a way to escape the seemingly fatal diagnosis. (The story was very, very loosely adapted in the Keanu Reeves-led CONSTANTINE film.) Now–as revealed on the Tuesday, February 18 episode of LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, “A Head of Her Time”—the ARROWverse is going to do its own take on the story.

“For Matt Ryan’s character, Constantine, we wanted to give him one of the iconic storylines from the comic where he gets lung cancer, and he’s going to try and do everything he can, in the most John Constantine way, to get out of it,” executive producer Grainne Godfree explained to reporters in the video below.

“Not to misquote, but I think [Matt] said in another interview that he did that [the fallout of the twist] was one of his favorite episodes,” Jes Macallan (Ava) added.

But for those familiar with how the graphic novel resolved things, that won’t exactly spoil what LEGENDS intends to do. “It’s a balance, because we want to honor it, at the same time we want to break new grounds,” executive producer Phil Klemmer said. “Hopefully we found the right balance with that. There’s no predicting where we’re headed based on the books. But it was a great launching point.”

Check out the videos for more from Godfree, Macallan, and Klemmer…

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, Tuesdays, 9/8c, The CW

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