THE WALKING DEAD

LegalDispatch 101

Marc Guggenheim

Jun 16, 2024

Greetings from Charlotte, North Carolina where I’m attending (and tabling at) HeroesCon ‘24.

I wrote that from my table yesterday, determined not to let another Friday pass without a Dispatch.

Oh well. Best laid plans and all that.

I’m back at my table and pecking away at this in between signings, etc. So, let’s dive in…

WORK UPDATE

Yesterday, I hit ‘send’ on the full draft of PROJECT MARBLE. I’m very excited about this one and feeling really good about the script. We’ll see.

In the meantime, work continues on PROJECT ATLANTIS and my wife and I finished our work on PROJECT SKETCH KNIFE, that non-film/TV/comic project that I’m NDA’d to within an inch of my life on.

Last week, I was up in Portland, Oregon visiting ShadowMachine, the animation studio that produced Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. I’ve never been behind the scenes on a stop-motion animation project before and was simply blown away by the crafstmanship and artistry deployed. These folks are truly masters of a very difficult craft. I came away from the experience thoroughly inspired

The church set from *Guillermo del Toro’s Pinoccio* with the awards garnered from the project.

I SHOOT MY MOUTH OFF AGAIN x 2

For reasons passing understanding, folks continue to reach out to get my thoughts on various things related to writing and Hollywood. Most recently, I chatted with Screen Daily about how showrunning in America differs from showrunning in Britain.

You can read the article here.

In addition, I went on Boundary Issues, the podcast my friend Ayelet Waldman does with her brother Paul. We talked about the current state of Hollywood (spoiler alert: it ain’t good) and it was a fun, mostly free-wheeling conversation despite the subject matter. Here’s Ayelet and Paul’s description of the episode:

Ayelet and Paul are joined by showrunner, screenwriter, comic book writer, and novelist Marc Guggenheim, the man behind shows including Arrow, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and Tales of Arcadia, to talk about why Hollywood is going down the tubes and everything is terrible for writers!

You can check it out here.

THE WALKING DEAD

My travel to North Carolina this past Friday had me spending A LOT of time waiting around in airports. Airports are a good place to take in a sizable sampling of a cross-section of humanity. And as I was waiting for my flight and waiting even longer for my luggage, I took the chance to just observe other people — both as I walked around and interacted with some (mostly airline personnel) — and I was struck by just how… dazed everyone was. The vast majority of folks just seemed to be sleepwalking — not just through the airport but, if I may be so bold as to speculate, through life.

To the extent you think that my observations here are correct, you may be tempted to write it off as everyone just being on their phones and assorted screens. But that’s the thing: Hardly anyone was on their phones. People were just… drifting. Apathetic and listless.

I suppose that this could all just be chalked up to travel fatigue, but I remain tempted to find a larger societal explanation. I think we’re all just tired, spent from the lassitude that comes from eight years of Covid, eight years of Agent Orange, societal tumult, global warfare, and things just generally being shitty.

Regarding Mr. Orange, I submit to you that even if you’re a fervent supporter of his, his feckless, wild, unpredictable actions and statements contribute to his general fatigued malaise we’re all experiencing. In other words, even if you’re a Trump supporter, he’s damaging your psyche without you realizing it. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

FUN, THIS IS

Speaking of Star Wars (for the uninitiated, the last sentence in the previous section was a line from The Empire Strikes Back), Screen Rant just showed some love for my work with Yoda, placing both my Yoda stories in the top-5 of their “10 Best Yoda Stories in Comic History.”

You can check out where my stories ranked here.

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THE WALKING DEAD

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