CONSTANTINE creator rumor debunked

Neil Gaiman dismisses online reports about Alan Moore being mad as hell

By Patrick Sauriol     March 04, 2004
Source: IGN FilmForce, Ain't It Cool News, Neil Gaiman

Yesterday both IGN FilmForce and Ain't It Cool News published reports from a scooper who claimed that comic book scribe Alan Moore had requested that his name be removed from the forthcoming CONSTANTINE movie. Moore created the character of John Constantine in the pages of SWAMP THING in the 80s before the English occultist was spun off into his own ongoing series.

The story went that Moore, after having read the CONSTANTINE movie script, was so upset over the changes made to the movie's Constantine character that he vowed to never give approval again for another movie project based on his comic work. It was also alleged that Moore refused to accept any monies from the movie owed to him for use of the character.

FilmForce tried to solicit a comment from a representative of DC Comics or CONSTANTINE producer Lauren Shuler Donner but was unable to get either party to speak. However, fellow comic book writer Neil Gaiman has issued his own statement which shoots down the gossip cold. "Oh, it's true that Alan's rejected the money for CONSTANTINE and assigned it to his cocreators, but he's now done that for all films of his and things he's done that might one day be filmed," Gaiman states in his online journal.

"As far as I know, from having spoken to him, Alan's view on CONSTANTINE itself is the same as his view on FROM HELL and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which is that he'll probably rent the DVD one day, you never know, hell might freeze over, -- and that the important work is the comic -- the main difference being here that the film is, from what I understand, mostly based on the Garth Ennis and Jamie Delano issues of the HELLBLAZER comic."


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