Spoilers Arrow - Season 4

[Sean_McCormick]

On the other hand The Flash is still on, and thankfully there's no indication that they'll pull it because of the upcoming film so their whole policy on the matter is kinda contradictory and confusing.

You can have Arrow without the suicide squad but you can't extract The Flash from The Flash without axing that show. My guess is, while TPTB prefer to not confuse the audience with multiple versions of the same character, they are not willing to scuttle a successful show over it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The JLA movies plan must have been on the books when the Flash TV show started, if you go up the ladder high enough.

The only reason that this dinky TV Show should have gone ahead, is if someone unscrupulous was betting on it being a failure, that they could make some walking around money off the CW, flex the brand to grease for periphery awareness, and then selfclean the entire small screen enterprise before the Flash Movie made 3 billion dollars over the course of two week ends.

I mean what if the Flash Movie only makes one Billion dollars because punters think that the TV show is shit they're already bored of and dismissed for cause years ago as irrelevant.

It would take the Flash, the TV show a thousand years to repay DC that 2 billion it thinks it has coming to it.

 

[Saga]

you can't extract The Flash from The Flash without axing that show. My guess is, while TPTB prefer to not confuse the audience with multiple versions of the same character, they are not willing to scuttle a successful show over it.

well, i guess they could replace Barry with Wally if higher ups really wanted.

 

[Christopher]

You can have Arrow without the suicide squad but you can't extract The Flash from The Flash without axing that show. My guess is, while TPTB prefer to not confuse the audience with multiple versions of the same character, they are not willing to scuttle a successful show over it.

Yeah. If the Flash movie had gone into development a couple of years earlier, Berlanti Productions would've probably had to pick another hero to base a show on, but since the show came first and turned out to be a hit, DC's presumably going to make an exception. It's happened before -- Justice League was able to keep using Batman even while The Batman was on another network at the same time, although stories featuring Batman villains were scuttled.

There's also the fact that the multiverse and alternate versions of the Flash are already built into the premise of the character, and the show's already laid the groundwork for that with Jay Garrick.

I suspect, though, that the show will have to avoid using whatever villains or storylines the movie uses. Sort of like how the '90s Spider-Man cartoon had to avoid Electro and Sandman because they were going to be the villains in the Spidey movie James Cameron was developing at the time (and eventually got to do a version of Electro late in the run, after the movie had fallen through).

 

[dahj]

My guess is, while TPTB prefer to not confuse the audience with multiple versions of the same character, they are not willing to scuttle a successful show over it.

Obviously, but who are these "confused audiences"?
That could have been an argument 50 years ago maybe, but in this day and age?
Marvel's doing a third version of Spiderman within 10 years (with additional two animated shows, and even a Broadway musical in that time), people just don't get confused by these things anymore.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Some people on Facebook were posting, "Geez, why did they pick Ezra Miller over Grant Gustin? The latter already has a show, and it would just confuse the viewers to have two different actors playing the same character." 1. We've had several different actors playing the same superhero roles. 2. Television and films are two distinct, separate media. 3. It's been done before: Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver) in X-Men: Days of Future Past and in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Did it confuse audiences?

 

[shapeshifter]

Well... giving credit where credit is due, I think the new Felicity and I are going to get along much better than before. It's as if they knew how annoying she could be and took in story steps to alleviate the situation.

 

[Reverend]

Some people on Facebook were posting, "Geez, why did they pick Ezra Miller over Grant Gustin? The latter already has a show, and it would just confuse the viewers to have two different actors playing the same character." 1. We've had several different actors playing the same superhero roles. 2. Television and films are two distinct, separate media. 3. It's been done before: Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver) in X-Men: Days of Future Past and in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Did it confuse audiences?

To be fair, that was a fairly unique situation and the two versions of that character were drastically different in almost every respect save for running really fast and their similar tastes in wardrobe colour pallets. Come to think of it, was either version ever referred to as "Quicksilver" in dialogue, or was it always just "Pietro"?

Not that I agree that people will be confused. If someone is enough of a fan to care whether or not the movies have anything to do with the TV shows then they're hardly going to be confused by it.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I don't think it's a matter of not wanting to confuse the audience...it's a matter of the execs feeling that there'll be less demand for a movie about X if they can watch X on TV every week. It's been known to happen before.

 

[dahj]

^^
Not buying that excuse either. These characters weren't on every week, and for many viewers were the first exposure to them. If anything the Arrowverse is a decent venue for promoting lesser known characters.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

WB and DC are both part of Time Warner, they're the same company so there's no licensing fees involved.

And "confusing the audience" is also a weak excuse. This has never been an issue for comic book fans, but I also think we're well beyond the point of general public not getting that different versions of characters can exist.

I have no idea how Time Warner is rationalizing this, but in general....
Companies that are owned by the same company are independent on the books. You can't sell widgets to the other company @$100 if they can be had for $50 somewhere else. This would be a loss for company A and a gain for company B that is totally unjustified.
What does this have to do with the matter at hand? If company A holds the rights to a character, company B has to either pay for the character, or not use that character, even though both companies are owned by the same overlord.
It's easier to make deals with a related subsidiary, but it is not a slam dunk that you can move property back and forth at will.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Synergy can be confused easily for tax evasion.

 

[Gaith]

... I hate to say it, but the show is really starting to test my patience. ARGUS hasn't been interesting since the end of S2, when Waller tried to blow up the whole city, and now she's gone and it's so very meh. (Also, she keeps talking about all these crises, but hasn't tried to recruit, I dunno, the freakin' Flash?! I was wondering why she hadn't appeared on that show, and I guess now we know why.) Meanwhile, the whole Andy Diggle storyline is boring beyond belief.

It may well turn out to be that Ollie and his bow and arrow are just not enough to sustain more than its first two seasons of awesome.

 

[Snaploud]

Not really. The Flash is currently a top 10 (or thereabouts generally) show. For the WB, that's prestige AND advertising revenue.

The Flash is the highest rated CW show, but it's not nearly in the 10 top on television. It ranked 90 in the 18-49 demographic last season and 118 over-all.

http://deadline.com/2015/05/2014-15-full-tv-season-ratings-shows-rankings-1201431167/

 

[dahj]

I have no idea how Time Warner is rationalizing this, but in general.....

Licensing is not the issue.
DC is a subsidiary of Warner Bros.

 

[Taylirious]

I really liked Goth-Felicity!

 

[jbny67]

Considering what they've done with the other characters appearing in Suicide Squad, was anyone else expecting them to kill off Katana during the sword fight tonight?

 

[Gryffindorian]

Next week: Malcolm Merlyn for Thea's life. The choice seems obvious.

This was one the better episodes I've seen this season. I don't know much about the villain Calculator, but it'll be interesting to see the dynamic between him and his daughter Felicity.

Having Roy around felt like old times; it would be nice to see him stay longer. Colton Haynes is a fine young actor and easy on the eyes.

The recyclable battery with epic energy output seemed a tad unbelievable. If something like that were invented, it would revolutionize everything in the world, including the way we live and work. Such a scientific and technological achievement would drastically impact our society; and Felicity was presenting it at a board meeting?

 

[Guy Gardener]

He sucked as a super villain in the 70s and 80s.

Really, really sucked.

Then the Calculator noticed that the Batfamily and others, had tech support.

Barbara Gordon = Oracle.

The Calculator became Oracle's equal and opposite.

Tech support for villains.

$1000 per question.



(This all happened in Birds of Prey 2006ish - 2010ish)

 

[Corran Horn]

The Flash is the highest rated CW show, but it's not nearly in the 10 top on television. It ranked 90 in the 18-49 demographic last season and 118 over-all.

http://deadline.com/2015/05/2014-15-full-tv-season-ratings-shows-rankings-1201431167/

It was the #1 show in its demo for its timeslot last week, I believe. That's good.