The Role: John Constantine Cast Instead: Keanu Reeves Back before Francis Lawrence and Reeves teamed up to basically drag one of the finest comic book properties of all time through a puddle of mess, zany, visionary (read terrible) director Tarsem Singh was attached to direct, with Cage playing the Liverpudlian demon slayer (presumably, his accent work is better than his wig work.) But Singh and Cage both left the project, somewhat acrimoniously in Singh's case, and leading to a lawsuit and counter lawsuit, as Warner Bros and Singh sued each other for breach of contract and false promises respectively. Cage got unattached around the same time, with the film heading into development hell around 2001/02, though it seems Singh never actually wanted to work with Cage as the star, saying he couldn't make the film he wanted with Cage involved. Nice of him. Why He Would Have Ruined It... Ruined is perhaps not the right word, given that Keanu Reeves did a pretty good job of convincing everyone that Constantine wasn't the perfect material for adaptation we all suspected it was, but it's difficult not to think Cage in the lead would have been even worse. With the writer at the time insisting he wanted to keep Constantine English, mostly to appease fans no doubt, that decision would undoubtedly have been an issue for Cage, who pretty much fails to speak in anything but his own voice in all of his films. And to be perfectly frank, there's very little about the the idea of Singh making Hellblazer with renowned lunatic Nicolas Cage as his lead that doesn't scream nightmarish possibilities. He's an odd-ball who embraces weirdness, and we could actually have had something worse than Lawrence and Reeves cooked up together had he stayed involved.
