• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

CW Looking to Add New Arrowverse Series in 2020

Wonder Woman! Oh, wait. Never mind.

We have a Superman-family show. We have a Batman-family show. The third pillar of the Trinity, though, we do not. So, maybe an Artemis series, with a tagline like "All Amazonian. No Princess."

Otherwise, looking at the kinds of shows they've done, it seems to me that the DC genres the CW isn't covering right now are supernatural, space, and apes. And I wouldn't mind a series that utilized the WildStorm characters; integrating them into the DC Universe a decade ago didn't entirely work, but there's really no reason why something like WildCATS or (imho, better) Stormwatch wouldn't work in the Arrowverse. Or, the CW could develop another series like Legends that takes a bunch of characters and does something unique with them.
 
I really wish people would stop saying stuff like this.
Because it's true? I mean they *could* do it on a budget, but they'd have to MASSIVELY scale back on the ring's use, the breadth of it's power, and the scope of the show as a whole down to just one planet...but than you're really not telling a Green Lantern story anymore, are you?

At that level you *might* be able to do an Alan Scott show, but who really cares about Alan Scott?
 
Because it's true?

It isn't true, though.

There is nothing inherent in either the Legion of Superheroes or Green Lantern that requires a television series based on either of those properties to "go big or go home".

You could easily simplify either property conceptually in order to make it doable on a "comparatively small" television budget without losing any of the things that make the properties what they are.
 
I really wish people would stop saying stuff like this.

Because it's true? I mean they *could* do it on a budget, but they'd have to MASSIVELY scale back on the ring's use, the breadth of it's power, and the scope of the show as a whole down to just one planet...but than you're really not telling a Green Lantern story anymore, are you?

As it stands, J'onn--in full-on alien mode--has some painfully cheap-looking CG flight/fight shots, and that's just one character. Nevermind attempting the realm of a character where aliens / alien planets, the ring's abilities and other sci-fi elements (which have been a part of the Silver Age-forward GL's world since his 1959 introduction). The group responsible for the DC/CW's EFX is dodgy quite often, and the last thing a GL production needs is to lose its otherworldly appeal (inherent to the character) with work that looks like video game intros from 2005.

But, the notion of a GL TV series is all loose speculation in any case, since the recent rumors about a GL movie being developed for the DCEU.

At that level you *might* be able to do an Alan Scott show, but who really cares about Alan Scott?

Next to no one.
 
At that level you *might* be able to do an Alan Scott show, but who really cares about Alan Scott?

I care. I love old school, Pre-Crisis Earth 2 stories.

It is interesting that the CW say they are adapting a new property. This would seem to eliminate anything already visited such as the Hawks, Firestorm, future Star City, Justice Society, etc. I do think the next show would probably focus on magic.

Constantine as part of a larger group of mystics could work, but I don't know if his character has lost its edginess too much in Legends. Deadman could certainly work. A version of the Spectre could work but I fear that it would become mainly a police procedural style show like Lucifer started out. Zatanna would probably work very well as a series, but she's never even headlined her own comic book.
 
Because it's true? I mean they *could* do it on a budget, but they'd have to MASSIVELY scale back on the ring's use, the breadth of it's power, and the scope of the show as a whole down to just one planet...but than you're really not telling a Green Lantern story anymore, are you?

A few years ago, who'd have imagined we'd ever see the Elongated Man on TV, or Grodd fighting King Shark, or a battle between a giant demon and a giant Beebo? The Arrowverse FX team has had years of experience pushing the boundaries of TV visual effects.

They also have a bunch of accumulated digital assets that would be easy enough to re-skin as translucent green ring constructs. You want GL to construct a gorilla, they can re-skin their digital Grodd or Solovar. You want a T. rex, they've got one in their library. Other animal constructs could be repurposed from the FX for Vixen's ashe animal spirits. Same if he creates a submarine, a jet plane, a missile, or any of the hundreds of other objects they've created digitally over the years. Or consider the battle between Killer Frost and Icicle last season on The Flash, where they were creating ice ramps all over the city. If they can do that, they can do ring forcefields and barriers the same way. So doing the ring constructs would be relatively easy.

The challenge would be depicting alien worlds and species, but Supergirl has gotten by with mostly humanoid aliens, and for that matter so has Agents of SHIELD over on the other side of the fence. Maybe you could have a show that focused on humanoid Lanterns like Katma Tui or Boodikka, with only occasional appearances by CGI aliens like Tomar-Re and Kilowog. Or, heck, I could see Kilowog being pulled off with prosthetics, with some modifications to his design.
 
I was just looking at recent comics releases and realized that The Wonder Twins is a very possible property that would fit in with the CW. Alien teens going to high school and fighting off alien invasions.
 
I'd love to see a show about Laurel from Earth 1, resurrected and fighting crime together with Sara and the relationship between the two sisters.
 
I care. I love old school, Pre-Crisis Earth 2 stories.
I suspect if they were to do a show with that kind of setting (possible, since they already touched on the JSA in LoT) I doubt they'd anchor it with Alan Scott. He'd be a cameo, or at most a supporting character.
You need a really good hook to make Golden Age stories to appeal to modern audiences--hence LoT using the only woman of colour in the group as the main character--and Alan just isn't it.
It isn't true, though.

There is nothing inherent in either the Legion of Superheroes or Green Lantern that requires a television series based on either of those properties to "go big or go home".

Yeah, nothing screams "modest budget" like a planet hopping space cop who's whole deal is creating hard light constructs. Even the animated versions of GL have struggled to do this with any read fidelity, but a live action network show where almost every shot of every episode is a VFX shot of some sort? Yeah, that ain't happening any time soon.

You could easily simplify either property conceptually in order to make it doable on a "comparatively small" television budget without losing any of the things that make the properties what they are.
Like I said, if you do that, then it's not really Green Lantern anymore, so why bother?
A few years ago, who'd have imagined we'd ever see the Elongated Man on TV, or Grodd fighting King Shark, or a battle between a giant demon and a giant Beebo? The Arrowverse FX team has had years of experience pushing the boundaries of TV visual effects.

They also have a bunch of accumulated digital assets that would be easy enough to re-skin as translucent green ring constructs. You want GL to construct a gorilla, they can re-skin their digital Grodd or Solovar. You want a T. rex, they've got one in their library. Other animal constructs could be repurposed from the FX for Vixen's ashe animal spirits. Same if he creates a submarine, a jet plane, a missile, or any of the hundreds of other objects they've created digitally over the years. Or consider the battle between Killer Frost and Icicle last season on The Flash, where they were creating ice ramps all over the city. If they can do that, they can do ring forcefields and barriers the same way. So doing the ring constructs would be relatively easy.

The challenge would be depicting alien worlds and species, but Supergirl has gotten by with mostly humanoid aliens, and for that matter so has Agents of SHIELD over on the other side of the fence. Maybe you could have a show that focused on humanoid Lanterns like Katma Tui or Boodikka, with only occasional appearances by CGI aliens like Tomar-Re and Kilowog. Or, heck, I could see Kilowog being pulled off with prosthetics, with some modifications to his design.
Wow. Your ignorance as to how VFX work is truly astonishing. Bravo!
 
Huh? Chris is telling the truth, as someone who does 3d work as a job..
Once you have an asset, like say a Gorrella, or any ship on trek.. All it takes is someone to animate it.. Granted, it takes time and money still put it on screen, but lets take a look at shows like The Flash, or even better, Stargate Atlantis..
The flash doesn't run around a "Real" city.. when he's running, its ALL CGI.. except when there doing a face or body shot.. so somewhere in whichever Cgi company.. they have Star city assets, and all the other assets the've already made..
Think of it as the old "Bottle Show" where you use sets that are already created to save costs on that episode..

And I pointed out Atlantis becasue the main place, atlantis is All cgi, and through out the 5 year run, they kept on adding more assets to there library to where they can do flybys in jumpers all through the city, or shots from one place to another..

For a Green Lantern series, it could work, but maybe at first make it a 13 episode season, and have as many practicle effects as possible, including people in makeup for aliens.. but over time, you build up your asset base, and dont have the expense of "Creating" new assets as often in the folowing seasons, so you just have to pay for render time and people animating things instead of people who build things... and it is as simple as Chris said, just retexure a made model ( realativly easy) to make it a glowing green.. Also, the constructs Don't have to be "Perfect" constructs, you can have basic stuff like a cartoony proportioned elephant, or a simplified cannon.. especially if they have a green glow to them.. so that saves on your cgi budget.. becuase the more complicated the model.. the more time it takes to render a shot..

So, in my opinion, yes.. they could do a decent Green Lantern Live action on a tv budget.. will it look corny at times? Yep.. would you have to make compromises.. Yep.. alot of an episode be dialog.. Yep.. but also Yep.. it could work nicely!
 
The flash doesn't run around a "Real" city.. when he's running, its ALL CGI.. except when there doing a face or body shot.. so somewhere in whichever Cgi company.. they have Star city assets, and all the other assets the've already made..

Right. Supergirl still does a bunch of FX shots in their digital National City that was built in season 1 based on the Los Angeles skyline. They even modified it with Nazi trappings in portions of Crisis on Earth-X.


Think of it as the old "Bottle Show" where you use sets that are already created to save costs on that episode..

I recall reading that Nickelodeon produced the feature film version of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius before the TV series so that they could use the movie budget to build a "digital backlot" of the town so they could then use it on the series. Similarly, Agents of SHIELD probably benefitted from getting to reuse the digital Quinjets built for the movies.


For a Green Lantern series, it could work, but maybe at first make it a 13 episode season, and have as many practicle effects as possible, including people in makeup for aliens.. but over time, you build up your asset base, and dont have the expense of "Creating" new assets as often in the folowing seasons, so you just have to pay for render time and people animating things instead of people who build things...

They could reuse digital and prosthetic aliens they've established on Supergirl, although they'd be the Earth-1 universe's counterparts for those species.


and it is as simple as Chris said, just retexure a made model ( realativly easy) to make it a glowing green.. Also, the constructs Don't have to be "Perfect" constructs, you can have basic stuff like a cartoony proportioned elephant, or a simplified cannon.. especially if they have a green glow to them.. so that saves on your cgi budget.. becuase the more complicated the model.. the more time it takes to render a shot..

Right. You don't need to render fur or scales accurately, just a smooth green surface. A lot like Vixen's ashe, as I said.


So, in my opinion, yes.. they could do a decent Green Lantern Live action on a tv budget.. will it look corny at times? Yep.. would you have to make compromises.. Yep.. alot of an episode be dialog.. Yep.. but also Yep.. it could work nicely!

The Arrowverse's big action set pieces do look blatantly CGI, but I don't care, because it's just impressive to see such ambitious sequences done at all. And hey, it's not like comic books are photorealistic.
 
Random thoughts in no particular order: -
I'd like to see 'Birds of Prey', possibly spun off from the future storyline in 'Arrow'.


BIRDS OF PREY has a movie in production, so that's probably out. (Granted, Warner is still talking about a FLASH movie.)

And, yeah, something from the spookier side of the DCU would be cool: Zatanna, Deadman, the Spectre.
 
So, in my opinion, yes.. they could do a decent Green Lantern Live action on a tv budget.. will it look corny at times? Yep.. would you have to make compromises.. Yep.. alot of an episode be dialog.. Yep.. but also Yep.. it could work nicely!

The first season doesn't have to be space based at all. Hal gets his ring and has adventures on earth before being introduced to the Green Lantern Corps.
 
Could be time for CW to dust off the "Amazon" concept I heard about years ago. If they had set up Grace Choi more along the lines from the comics, they could've based a Wonder-Woman/Amazonian-themed show around her.
 
Huh? Chris is telling the truth, as someone who does 3d work as a job..
You're not the only one. ;)
Look, it's not just about asset generation/recycling or even technical feasibility. It's about the sheer volume of work needed per-episode.
Comping, render time, keyframing, using the mo-cap stage, to say nothing of what would need to go into shooting the live action plates...it all takes time, planning and most especially money. To have to do that for almost every shot of every episode, week in, week out is a logistical and budgetary nightmare; it has "perpetual crunch time" written all over it. No amount of bottle shows or short-cuts could alleviate that without making it all look horrifically cheap.

All the evidence for this is already up there on the screen. We've already seen them push themselves and it's always painfully obvious when they can't quite get there. And that's on shows that have a mere fraction of the VFX necessary to faithfully pull of a GL show.
The only way that show happens is as a prestige 8-12 episode streaming series where WB just eats the loss to keep their streaming service alive.
BIRDS OF PREY has a movie in production, so that's probably out. (Granted, Warner is still talking about a FLASH movie.)

And, yeah, something from the spookier side of the DCU would be cool: Zatanna, Deadman, the Spectre.
I'm curious if they could get away with doing a 'Birds of Prey' in all but name and just call it "Canaries" or something? I mean it's not like they have to worry about infringement by way of copycat when the licence holders own the whole IP. I mean wasn't the whole "Legend of Tomorrow" pretty much just made out of whole cloth from existing characters?

Zatanna could probably support a show all on her own, though her stage magic secret identity isn't anywhere near the effective cover it used to be so either they do it as a period piece or find some way to update the concept. It'd be a shame to loot that top & tails though.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, nothing screams "modest budget" like a planet hopping space cop who's whole deal is creating hard light constructs. Even the animated versions of GL have struggled to do this with any read fidelity, but a live action network show where almost every shot of every episode is a VFX shot of some sort? Yeah, that ain't happening any time soon.

Exactly. Some seem to want to shoehorn big characters into the Arroverse no matter how poor the adaptation would be based on the majority of their VFX being less than impressive. Green Lantern is THE sci-fi superhero of DC, and gutting him to street level as the standard format of the show (as opposed to a special, purposely earth-bound storyline like that of the comics' Green Lantern/Green Arrow run from O'Neil and Adams) would fly in the face of who the character was meant to be.

I can guess a forthcoming movie version will show the world how GL is supposed to be handled.


Like I said, if you do that, then it's not really Green Lantern anymore, so why bother?

Yep.

Wow. Your ignorance as to how VFX work is truly astonishing. Bravo![/QUOTE]

……………………..
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top