Black Lightning’ DC Superhero Series In Works From Greg Berlanti, Mara Brock Akil & Salim Akil
- Thread starter Enterprise is Great
- Start date
A lot teachers have to take Summer jobs. When I was just out of High School I worked at a theme park during the Summer, half of my supervisors were teachers.
That's because teachers are ridiculously underpaid in many districts in the US.
Fox has committed to a pilot, and if all goes well, it could go to series.
http://deadline.com/2016/09/black-l...eg-berlanti-mara-brock-salim-akil-1201815368/
http://deadline.com/2016/09/black-l...eg-berlanti-mara-brock-salim-akil-1201815368/
So probably BL won't be in the Berlantimultiverse, at least not overtly. I just hope he isn't in the Gotham-verse.
I understand that the CW's plate is full with superheroes and I'm not one to usually say these things but they could stand a little more diversity in their color wheel. I think depending how they approach this it could be a really cool show and garner some attention with strong role models and topical situations. Granted we have very little to go on but I can at least imagine how this series could really work which I can't say for all proposals.
I don't think it's fair to accuse Arrowverse of not doing enough there, Arrow has Diggle and Holt, Flash has the Wests, Legends have Firestorm, Hawkgirl and Vixen and Supergirl has Jimmy Olsen and Martian Manhunter...
I was thinking more the CW in general. If I'm wrong, I'm willing to concede as I don't watch much of it outside the genre stuff. It seems to me a show with a black lead would not be a bad thing for the network. But yeah I think the Flash in particular has done well in that department without being hamfisted about it.
It always had a diverse cast, but it tended either to kill off its nonwhite cast members or to cast them stereotypically as primitives. And that lasted until I gave up watching partway through season 2.
A lot of CW shows have diverse casts, but the only CW drama that currently has a nonwhite lead is Beauty and the Beast, and it's ending in a week. I've always been impressed by that show's diverse casting (though by very little else about it) -- Kristin Kreuk in the lead, getting to play her real ethnicity for a change, and a cast that was never more than 50% white. Once that show's gone, though, the only scripted CW show of any kind with a nonwhite lead will be the comedy Jane the Virgin.
Okay, let's just rename the network The BerlantiW.
If BL does move there, I wonder if it'll be on Earth-1 (Arrowverse), Earth-38 (Supergirl), or some other Earth. As I've said before, the premise of BL being an older superhero coming out of retirement doesn't particularly fit Earth-1, unless he was very secretive the first time out, but it could fit well enough into Earth-38's history. And it'd be nice to give that Earth a second series to balance out the three Earth-1 series.
If BL does move there, I wonder if it'll be on Earth-1 (Arrowverse), Earth-38 (Supergirl), or some other Earth. As I've said before, the premise of BL being an older superhero coming out of retirement doesn't particularly fit Earth-1, unless he was very secretive the first time out, but it could fit well enough into Earth-38's history. And it'd be nice to give that Earth a second series to balance out the three Earth-1 series.
I think there needs to be a point of clarification here regarding Berlanti's involvement in this series. He's only involved from a production standpoint, which is the same capacity with which he's involved in Riverdale and NBC's Blindspot.
That's not going to change even if The CW were to pick up the show, so the chances of it joining the Arrowverse are pretty slim unless its actual creators were to completely re-imagine it from the ground up.
That's not going to change even if The CW were to pick up the show, so the chances of it joining the Arrowverse are pretty slim unless its actual creators were to completely re-imagine it from the ground up.
Well, it can always be set on "Earth 72" or something, which would allow the show to take place in the crossovers.
You mean that he's not a co-creator on the show, just a patron? Even so, that doesn't mean the Akils couldn't choose to make it compatible with the other shows if The CW and Berlanti/Schechter wanted it.
Why couldn't they? Powerless was reimagined massively between its initial pilot and its final version. And Black Lightning doesn't even have a pilot yet. It just has a script, and scripts get rewritten all the time.
The party line from DC seems to be that the Multiverse encompasses all the shows and movies. The showrunner of Powerless has been talking about how his show is set on "Earth-P" and how there's a potential for in-joke crossovers like, hypothetically, maybe Grant Gustin doing a cameo as that universe's Barry Allen. So far that's all just talk, but it's the second time it's come up in interviews (Geoff Johns also said something about the shows and the movies being different Earths within the Multiverse), which suggests that maybe it really is the official position rather than just blowing smoke for publicity.
With the way that the Akils developed the series, there's really no reason for them to rework it just for the sake of blending it into the Arrowverse.
If the series does end up on The CW and there was a desire to blend it with the Arrowverse, it's more likely that the means of doing so would come from one of the already -existing series as a sort of "after-the-fact" assimilation.
If the series does end up on The CW and there was a desire to blend it with the Arrowverse, it's more likely that the means of doing so would come from one of the already -existing series as a sort of "after-the-fact" assimilation.
Given that Superman has previous history with "The 100" (the criminal/villian gang that BL often clashes with, they were/are based out of Suicide Slum, Metropolis), I'd favour setting it on Earth-38 with Supergirl, J'onn, Mon-El and Guardian.
What's your source of information for all this? You sound like you have some detailed inside scoop on the development process.
And there can be many reasons for retooling a series, coming from many sources. Maybe The CW would ask them to tie it into the other shows. Given how much those shows are embracing their interconnectedness, it would be rather odd to have a fifth DC superhero show that were completely insulated from the rest.
We're talking about a show that hasn't even shot its pilot yet. It's premature even to call it a series; it's a premise for a series. It would be absurdly easy at this stage to revise that premise to fit it into Earth-1 or Earth-38, if that is what The CW or Berlanti or the Akils want to do.
I agree. I've been wanting a second Earth-38 series, and BL's connection to Metropolis makes it a logical connection. Earth-38's history meshes nicely with what we know about the BL premise, since it's had Superman for over a dozen years so there's room for another veteran hero; and its worldbuilding beyond National City is still largely an open book, so there's a good chance the BL premise could be integrated with it fairly easily.
What, they can't just use portals to crossover with Earth-BL?