Q & A

LegalDispatch 0.91

Another busy week. Cranking away on pitching, producer notes for PROJECT MARBLE, pitching, developing pitches, and pitching pitching pitching.

Lots to cover this week, so let’s dive in…

IN ANY LIFETIME

Well, this is exciting: In Any Lifetime has been officially announced via an exclusive article on People.com.

Money quote:

Lake Union Publishing editor Chantelle Aimée Osman says that the novel is a “collision” of favorites like Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and The Time Traveler’s Wife.

“With In Any Lifetime, Marc’s crafted both an epic love story and an adventure through time,” Osman continues. “I couldn’t stop turning the pages, and hope readers feel the same way.”

You can check out the whole article here.

Q & A

This is also exciting: In the past week, I’ve gotten a lot of questions on Twitter and in the comments. I love answering questions, so please keep them coming…

Via Twitter, @LukeFlux 1 asked:

Was there ever anything you wished to do in the Arrowverse that you never got to do, whether it be because of restrictions by WB, budget or other?

The short answer is, “Yes. A gajillion things.” The longer answer is more nuanced, however. There are a wide variety of ideas that didn’t move forward either because we knew we couldn’t afford them and/or because we knew that DC would never go for it. But those ideas are lost to the mists of time, in large part because, like I said, they never even went beyond a glimmer in someone’s eye.

I can’t speak for the other Arrowverse showrunners, but I considered myself fairly good at knowing, instinctively, what was affordable/unaffordable and what would or wouldn’t fly with our studio and network partners. Accordingly, I wouldn’t let those ill-fated ideas get very far down the road. Whenever possible, I try to avoid wasting time making beds in a burning house.

I know it’s not at the heart of your question, but your question really makes me think of those things that we did end up doing that were either more difficult or more expensive — or whatnot — than anticipated. For example, Nate’s steel effect on Legends of Tomorrow. Very expensive, particularly to do it properly, with all the reflections. (There’s a reason Colossus’ armor in Deadpool 2 has a matte, non-reflecting finish, is all I’ll say.)

And then there was the time that DC encouraged us to do the Suicide Squad on Arrow only to tell us in subsequent seasons that they needed to be taken off the board to make room for the Suicide Squad movie. (No sour grapes from me on this, however. We always approached things from the philosophy that all these characters were just “on loan” to us and were DC’s to do with as they pleased, including telling us to stop using them.)

Also on Twitter, @Matty_Patty23 asked:

What else was planned for FlashForward (Season, character arcs)? I'm assuming the extinction event was nuclear war since there are several references to Oppenheimer & bombs in the series, & it is the only event that is caused by ppl & therefore could be prevented

For the uninitiated, FlashForward was a series created by David Goyer and Brannon Braga that I showran with Goyer for ABC (at least before David and I were both fired within months of each other).

The plans were David’s and Brannon’s so it’s not really my place to comment, but since this has already been discussed post-cancellation I figure it can’t hurt. With the proviso that any mischaracterization of their plans is my fault, the overall plan was this:

Each season was going to end with a new flashforward but with decreasing time horizons. So, if Season One began with a 6-month flashforward, the season would end with a 6-week jump. Season 2 might end with a one-month jump. Etc. The penultimate season would end with a 24-hour jump… but no one would have “seen” anything — thus suggesting that humanity had only 24 hours to live.

What Mark and Lloyd would eventually uncover was the fact that an “extinction level event” was headed towards the Earth that would wipe out all human consciousness. Thus, the flashforwards were actually a series of “bounding jumps” designed to, essentially, allow human consciousness to “leapfrog” over the incoming extinction event.

Consequently, the cabal (I forget what we called them) of bad guys wasn’t trying to kill humanity; they were trying to save it. Problem was that we were going to kill off all the bad guys in order to place Mark and Lloyd in a position where, to save the world, they had to work together and become the very people they’d spent the series trying to stop.

Or something like that. It was a long time ago…

In the comments, Chris Baldit had some things to say and asked a few questions. My responses are interlineated below:

Thank you for your responses to the comments and questions. So sorry to continue with the Arrowverse comments, but I have to say that having achieved that bit of TV is not a bad legacy for anyone and that is an understatement.

No need to apologize! I don’t mind talking about the Arrowverse at all — particularly if I’m doing so in response to someone’s question rather than reliving my own glory days. And you’re 1000% right about the Arrowverse not being a bad legacy to leave behind. I remain quite proud of the work we all did.

In that same vein, you had previously made a comment about the amazing Crisis [on Infinite Earths] crossover episodes that continues to intrigue me and I noticed no one else brought up. You mentioned some actors who were approached either could not appear due to scheduling conflicts or they wanted too much money. Without providing a reason, would you mind sharing the names of the actors who were approached but could not or would not do it? 

I fear that mentioning all of them would provide too much fodder for the writers of clickbait articles. That being said, we’d originally written Hour One (the Supergirl episode) to feature a cameo by Cameron Cuffe, who as playing Seg-El on Krypton. Cameron was delightful to deal with but we couldn’t align our shooting schedule with his.

I’ll also say that I didn’t even bother to approach Dean Cain to play Clark or Superman. It’s not because Dean doesn’t share my politics, however. In general, I don’t believe in making casting choices based on someone’s personal opinions. In the case of Superman, however, I just couldn’t wrap my brain around someone so virulently anti-immigrant playing a character like Clark who is, to me, the ultimate immigrant.

I also had questions about writing scripts and so forth. 

When you complete a script for a certain medium (say film) and it is not used, do you routinely recycle them into other projects in TV or your novels or even comics?

I wouldn’t say “routinely,” but I’ve certainly done so in the past. For example, my first novel, Overwatch, was based on a spec screenplay I’d written and I’m using a screenplay as a kind of “super outline” for the novel I’m writing right now.

I’ve discovered that using the screenplay format (which I’m most familiar wit) as an outline for prose (which I’m less experienced in) seems to be a process that works for me. And Trollhunters originally began as a movie before we shifted it into being a TV series. But apart from those limited examples, I can’t recall too many other times when I’ve tried to tell the same story in multiple mediums.

When the writers of a show complete scripts for a whole season that is later canceled (like "Schmigadoon" on Apple), could one of the writers use the same plot of their episode for another project or is it the studio’s property?

It really depends on how character-specific the plot is. I’ve certainly seen some writers repeat or revisit plots of previously-aired storylines but the practice gets dicier the more it looks as though the characters involved are fundamentally the same.

Would you ever consider writing a western (film or novel)?

Funny you should ask! I’m pitching a western TV series in a few hours. Also, PROJECT ARTERY had some serious western elements in it.

Although I read once that he had denied it, was Liam Neeson ever approached about reprising the role of Ra's al Ghul in Arrow? Was it ever considered?

This is going to sound like a cop-out, but that was almost 10 years ago and I don’t really remember. To the best of my recollection, we had discussed Liam doing one scene or one episode of Arrow. But we knew that we’d never be able to afford him for anything more than that. I don’t remember whether we’d even gotten as far as reaching out to his reps, but my guess is that we didn’t. The reason is that whenever we would make an offer to an actor of Liam’s calibre, we’d write a letter to them expressing our excitement/interest. I looked through my Season 3 files and couldn’t find such a letter. I did, however, find a couple little goodies which I’ll share here for fun:

Who is the most famous person you have ever met?

That is probably a tie between Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise. I developed a Perry Mason movie for RDJ and worked with him extensively on the script. And Tom visited the set of Eli Stone when his then-wife Katie Holmes was guest starring. Both guys were really, really lovely and down to earth.

STAR WARS: DARK DROIDS - D-SQUAD

This Tuesday (3/5), the trade paperback collecting all four issues of Star Wars: Dark Droids - D-Squad comes out. Here’s the official write-up:

The unsung heroes of the Clone Wars return! A terrible scourge is corrupting the galaxy's droids. To fight this menace and rescue his best friend C-3PO, R2-D2 must assemble a team of droid heroes: the D-Squad! It's an adventure filled with guest stars from across the galaxy, including a special appearance by Chopper from Star Wars: Rebels! See Artoo battle the murderous BT-1! Witness the psychotic 0-0-0 in a showdown with the bounty hunter IG-88! Welcome the return of QT-KT! And as D-Squad's mission brings them into the palace of Jabba the Hutt, our heroes take on the malevolent torture droid EV-9D9! Will Artoo's journey lead only to carnage and destruction? Or will he also find love? Collecting STAR WARS: DARK DROIDS - D-SQUAD #1-4.

You can pre-order a copy on Amazon.

SUPERMAN: THE SAGA CONTINUES

Yesterday, James Gunn teased the glyph he’s using in his forthcoming Superman movie. Those of you familiar with my recent discussion of Brandon Routh’s Superman appearing in Crisis on Infinite Earths might notice a similarity.

From Crisis On Infinite Earths Hour 5.

From James Gunn’s Instagram post.

I spoke with my friend Russ Burlingame about it. You can read my comments here.

Okay, I think I’ve now officially gotten myself into enough trouble for one week. See you next week.

Be good to each other.

Best,

Marc

Encino, California

3.1.24