Oh. My. Ghod...

WB is doing a movie based on the "John Constantine: Hellblazer" comic book, from DC's Vertigo line.

Starring Keanu Reeves.

I cannot begin to describe how wrong this is. This would be a perfect role for Ewan McGregor or Rufus Sewell (see the latter in Dark City, and tell me I'm wrong, I dare you).

But Keanu Friggin' Reeves? They don't even have the decency to hire a Brit for the part? Or at least someone who can emote worth a damn?

(The bad news comes via Treacher.)

I hate when this happens. Hellblazer is a really good comic, but after a trainwreck of a movie like this, everyone will be convinced that it's as lame as ... well, as lame as they expect a comic book to be. It happened with Daredevil, and with many other worthwhile characters.

The worst example of this I can recall is the execrable "Sable" TV show, based on a superb creator-owned comic, Mike Grell's Jon Sable, Freelance; especially galling was that they took one of my favorite female characters, Myke Blackmun, and turned her from a sensitive, melancholy, romantic artist, into a loud, overdressed, shallow ditz.

(In doing a Google search for the above links, I learned that there was an abortive attempt more recently to do a Jon Sable movie; the rights were optioned by Gene Simmons, late of the rock band "Kiss", who was a fan of the comic. It was scrapped after 9/11, since the story featured buildings blowing up in New York City. Nuts, I would have liked to have seen it.)

Keanu Reeves. Bollocks.