News ‘Swamp Thing’ series In works at DC Digital Service, ‘Metropolis’ in redevelopment

It's too bad I'm not into horror. Swamp Thing is my local superhero, but it's just not a genera I enjoy.

 

It started already? I didn't think it started for at least another month or two.

 

Started streaming this morning.

 

Wow, so the first Swamp Thing episode, Good Omens, and Godzilla: King of The Monsters all came out day. This was a very good day for Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans.

 

Lived up to it's name, a lot of swamp and a lot of "The Thing".

Didn't hook me like Doom Patrol but to be fair DP was totally in my wheelhouse so this may be more of a slow burn. The pilot was a bit too familiar from other shows I've seen and all the really CG vines growing everywhere didn't do it any favors (I know that's not completely fair as I'm sure they're doing what they can but I personally found it distracting and broke the atmosphere). I didn't hate it or anything but I'm not hooked yet but I'm not ruling out the possibility but for now I'm waiting to see where it's going before passing judgment.

My favorite part was that swamp bar, that's just a cool set.

I thought the black kid in the beginning on the boat might be this show's version of the kid from the 1982 movie but that was quickly dispelled...

 

@Mr. Adventure: Most of the vine effects in the show are practical, not CGI, just so you know.

 

I watched the pilot, it seems fun. I'll stick around.

 

The autopsy scene was pretty good but I'm assuming this isn't practical:

 

^ Given that, as noted, most of the vine effects are practical, I would personally go with "not CGI" for the super-growth in that sequence, but YMMV.

My review of the Pilot, cross-posted from elsewhere:
I'm not somebody who is generally big on Horror as a genre, but my interest in this show was piqued because I remember the character of Swamp Thing from the very short-lived animated series that aired on FOX in late 1990/early 1991, and so I decided to check it out despite not being that big of a fan of horror stuff in general. Thankfully, I can confidently say that there's a lot to like here, even for non-horror fans like myself, and that the show is more suspense than horror, reminding me of equal parts Helix, Penny Dreadful, and Sleepy Hollow (which is appropriate given that Len Wiseman co-created that show and directed this Pilot). Abby is a great heroine and her chemistry with Alec is immediately apparent from almost the moment they first interact with each other outside the Coyle house, and things only get better between them from there as they start to bond over their 'shared status' as pariahs (although I was a little annoyed that the font on Abby's phone wasn't bigger so that what Alec did to be labeled a pariah could be more clearly discerned). I also wish Abby had gone ahead and told him more of her own personal story about what happened to Shawna Sunderland (DC loves their alliterative names, don't they). One thing I noticed is that there were two Series Regulars, Kevin Durand and Jennifer Beals, missing from both the main title sequence and the episode itself, so I'm wondering if said credits will end up changing episode-by-episode based on whether or not a given Series Regular appears. In terms of major characters who aren't Abby and Alec, Will Patton and Virginia Madsen imbued Avery and Maria Sunderland with just the right amount of creepiness so as to make you interested in them but also very, very wary of them, although I do think the producers might be operating under the assumption that there's more of a mystery surrounding the dumping of the accelerant and who shot Alec than there actually is (since the answer to both of those questions is clearly Avery), Liz is interesting and is clearly being set up to be Abby's "gal Friday" and biggest asset, and Matt and Xanadu were just kind of 'there' this episode. All in all, this was a really strong premiere that managed to get me to overcome my usual aversion to the Horror genre with a perfect balance of intriguing narrative, strong protagonist characters (Abby's listed as the main protagonist, but Alec/Swamp Thing is, IMO, very much her 'co-protagonist' and this episode demonstrates that pretty strongly), and a nice cast, and I can't wait to make Fridays "Swamp Thing" day going forward as often as possible.

 

Has anyone heard if they will be bringing the whole Green/Red/Gray thing, and the Parliment of Trees into the show at some point? I haven't heard anything about that stuff in the articles I've read, but they are such a big part of the Swamp Thing comics now that I find it hard to believe they'll be leaving it out of the show completely.

 

QUOTE="JD, post: 12970566, member: 3220"]Has anyone heard if they will be bringing the whole Green/Red/Gray thing, and the Parliment of Trees into the show at some point? I haven't heard anything about that stuff in the articles I've read, but they are such a big part of the Swamp Thing comics now that I find it hard to believe they'll be leaving it out of the show completely.[/QUOTE]

Spoiler: Pretty innocuous but just to be safe...

I don't know the comics but they were going to do Parliament of Trees before the episode order got cut down from 13 to 10.

 

Swamp Thing canceled

WTF?!?

 

Wow - either there must have been some major behind the scenes drama (not necessarily on set); or they saw a trend with the streaming numbers out of the gate they really didn't like.

 

Turns out they were thrilled with the quality of the show, but got fucked over by the state of North Carolina with the tax rebates. This is all about money, not the usual dreaded "creative differences". Not sure if this site allows you to embed tweets, so I'm just gonna copy and paste what QG/Fandango/Movies.com writer John Gholson had to say:

Then he posted the links.

 

Wow, the whole thing shut down because someone did the taxes wrong. I wonder why nobody found that out until after the series was well into production.

 

Or why they don't just relocate the production to Louisiana (a swampy state known for its great film industry tax incentives) for Season 2. I now completely understand cutting Season 1 short, but straight up cancelling it just blows my fucking mind.

 

It sounds like they spent a lot on a lavish production with the expectation that they'd be getting much of it back, and the accounting error means that they've lost much more money than they thought they would. So that sizeable loss probably offset any savings they'd get from another state's tax incentives.

 

That sucks. I was really looking forward to this. Swamp Thing's a great character, and adapting the beloved runs by Alan Moore, Scott Snyder and Charles Soule would have made for one hell of a series.

Plus I really wanted to see Mark Verheiden flourish after knocking it out of the park with Ash vs. Evil Dead's final season. Coming into a show after the original showrunner was fired due to creative differences should have been disaster, but he managed to pull it off beautifully.

Oh, well. Hopefully the truncated sole season of Swamp Thing has adequate closure. A great miniseries is better than nothing at all, I suppose.

 

I'll bet if they had done the math on the taxes right in the first place they would have filmed in Louisiana from the beginning. How often do you get the chance to get tax breaks and film on location where the story is set?