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CW Looking to Add New Arrowverse Series in 2020

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.

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

Neither of these things is true.
 
I really wish people would stop saying stuff like this.
If they can't make Starfire orange or Beast Boy's skin green...seems like GL constructs would be tough.
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?
Indeed
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!

So you're saying repeat shots...like Filmation would do in Flash Gordon with Hawkmen being vaporized every other episode, is what could make it doable?

Makes sense to me for a SPACESHIP show, where you have that 15-39 seconds watching it fly or going down the body of the ship...but for Green Lantern, you wpuld need original constructs...

I think the GL movie..when they showed Is and the training, felt appropriately cosmic. TV count handle that, IMO.
 
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.
They could turn her into more of a street magician type performer.
We haven't heard about the live action Justice League Dark movie in a while, so maybe they could just do that with Constantine and Zatanna as the co-leads. With Swamp Thing ending there's no reason they couldn't just bring the character, either the same version or a new, over to this.
I thought of another one I would love to see, that I doubt very much would happen, Demon Knights. I just read the first collection recently and really enjoyed it, and with GoT over everyone seems to be scrambling to do their own medieval fantasy show. It could also be a chance to give Casper Crump a chance to play Vandal Savage again, after he already improved in his appearance last season. The most complicated things in the show were magic spells, monsters, and a flying horse, and we've already seen them do a lot of similar stuff on the current shows.
 
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.

Obviously they wouldn't do it every episode. Naturally they'd do the same thing they do already on Supergirl and Flash and Legends -- do more modest FX on a regular basis and save the really big, expensive stuff for a few episodes per season.

As I mentioned before, I'm thinking of a show that would be largely set on Earth with occasional visits to space, like the GL comics have often done it. Or they could follow the lead of Green Lantern: The Animated Series and concoct a reason to base the main characters on a spaceship or station so you'd have standing sets. Sure, they couldn't duplicate the spectacle of the comics on a weekly basis, but they could do some really cool stuff maybe half a dozen times per season, like they do on the other shows.

After all, as cool as the Arrowverse's FX are, they aren't the main reason we watch the shows. I don't like the idea of a John Stewart/Diggle GL show because I want to see glowing green helicopters and dinosaurs; I like the idea because it would be cool to see David Ramsey play John Stewart for real. He doesn't have to go flying around in space in every episode, as long as he's involved in good storylines and character interactions.
 
Well it comes down to money.. How much they are willing to pay for the CGI... I mean, you couldn't do an "Animiated" suit like the movie did ( to horrible effect.. ugh).
Do they have the audience to pull off a Lanteren Tv series and have an appropriate budget? on the cw probably not.. they "Maybe get" 5 million to watch, usually quite less.. if it was on the DC stream, its possible, or the Netflix.. maybe.. but to do it justice, you'd need close to Discovery money.. which you wouldn't have.. We'll see down the line if TV effects can get better. :)
 
I'm not sure what concept people have in their heads for what Green Lantern is supposed to be about, but it's not like other superhero shows where the guy walks around in civies 75% of the time, flits between two or three standing sets and only uses the full superhero getup two or three times an episode to catch some bank robbers or baddie of the week in between having some personal drama with the person yammering in his ear.

Lanterns aren't really street level crime fighters. They're cosmic level space police, each responsible for an entire sector of space. This is not something you can credibly do the way things are done on Arrow, Flash, Supergirl or even LoT. If every planet start looks like downtown Vancouver, people will notice. Hell, they struggle enough as it is to make LoT look half-way credible and that's a mostly comedy show that has the luxury of being able to hire period costumes, care & set-dressing because they're real things that exist.
Good luck going to a prophouse and trying to get costumes, props and makeup sorted for 50 Kalanorian extras without having to fabricate most of it from scratch!

There are much more suitable characters to use if you want another superhero show in the same vein as the existing CW stable. Doing a Green Lantern show is like doing a Captain Marvel (no, not the Red Cheese one) show. Sure you could ground them on Earth and take away their powers...but then why bother? Just make a Blue Beetle, Wonder Girl or Ms. Martian show instead.
 
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Do they have the audience to pull off a Lanteren Tv series and have an appropriate budget?

How do you define "appropriate?" Exactly replicating what the comics do isn't even on the table for a TV series. Naturally you adapt it to what's possible. You set it largely on Earth or on a ship, you use mostly humanoid aliens, you tell stories driven more by characters and drama than action and effects (which is a good thing). But that doesn't mean you can't occasionally do some really cool visual stuff for the sweeps episodes and the crossovers and the premieres and the finales. It's amazing how much the Arrowverse has managed to achieve on a TV budget, compared to what was possible 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30. They keep raising the bar, because they don't give up when faced with a challenge.


Good luck going to a prophouse and trying to get costumes, props and makeup sorted for 50 Kalanorian extras without having to fabricate most of it from scratch!

No different from what Star Trek or Doctor Who or countless other space shows have managed to do over the decades. And Supergirl's already established a number of alien species whose designs could be repurposed for their counterparts in Earth-1's universe, so they've got a leg up on that already.
 
No different from what Star Trek or Doctor Who or countless other space shows have managed to do over the decades. And Supergirl's already established a number of alien species whose designs could be repurposed for their counterparts in Earth-1's universe, so they've got a leg up on that already.
Well for one thing modern Star Trek is about the most expensive per episode show on TV that doesn't feature dragons, so not the best example for affordability.
And of course the main characters aren't flying around in front of a green screen 70% of the time. Plus, as previously stated, show like Trek have the same luxuries as the likes of Flash & Arrow: ie: standing sets you can film 90% of the scenes on. And while a lot of the costumes and make-up are custom, they also get to re-use the same ones *a lot*, which massively reduces production costs after the pilot.
It'd be like making a Star Trek show with a crew of 1, no ship and all the exposition comes from a piece of jewellery.
 
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You're asuming that they need to spend a lot.

Just use a green felt tip pen on the negative, like they used to in the 60s.
 
I'm not sure what concept people have in their heads for what Green Lantern is supposed to be about, but it's not like other superhero shows where the guy walks around in civies 75% of the time, flits between two or three standing sets and only uses the full superhero getup two or three times an episode to catch some bank robbers or baddie of the week in between having some personal drama with the person yammering in his ear.

Remember, some are deliberately downgrading GL's nature as a character in order to force feed it through the less than spectacular FX grinder of the Arrowverse. That desperation to drag GL into it would only cheapen the character, but again, GL is likely headed toward the big screen, and there's no way that would not lay the tracks to use every major GL of the past 40+ years, including John Stewart.

Just make a Blue Beetle, Wonder Girl or Ms. Martian show instead.

Or as some have suggested, the magical characters who did operate in the real world often, like vintage Spectre stories.
 
How do you define "appropriate?" Exactly replicating what the comics do isn't even on the table for a TV series. Naturally you adapt it to what's possible. You set it largely on Earth or on a ship, you use mostly humanoid aliens, you tell stories driven more by characters and drama than action and effects (which is a good thing). But that doesn't mean you can't occasionally do some really cool visual stuff for the sweeps episodes and the crossovers and the premieres and the finales. It's amazing how much the Arrowverse has managed to achieve on a TV budget, compared to what was possible 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30. They keep raising the bar, because they don't give up when faced with a challenge.
I'm still amazed we got the King Shark vs Gorilla Grodd episode and it wasn't a complete train wreck. No it didn't have Endgame calliber effect, but it was still pretty damn impressive for a mid-level network TV show.
 
I'm still amazed we got the King Shark vs Gorilla Grodd episode and it wasn't a complete train wreck. No it didn't have Endgame calliber effect, but it was still pretty damn impressive for a mid-level network TV show.
From what I gather, King Shark at least only looked that good because one of their asset builders worked his arse off in his own time to make it look that good. Had it been made purely on the clock, it probably would have been not so great.
Not sure if Grodd was the same deal, but it may have been the same artist.
 
If they can't make Starfire orange...
In the comics, her skin is supposed to be golden, like someone with a good tan. Pop a pair of sunglasses on her and she can walk down the street without people wondering if she's from the Jersey Shore or Loompaland.
 
From what I gather, King Shark at least only looked that good because one of their asset builders worked his arse off in his own time to make it look that good. Had it been made purely on the clock, it probably would have been not so great.
Not sure if Grodd was the same deal, but it may have been the same artist.

Yes, I believe it was. They were both cases where the FX artists were so eager to achieve it that they worked on their own time to build the models, and that's what made it possible to do the episodes.

That's why I'm not willing to rule anything out when it comes to Arrowverse FX. These guys love what they're doing and have repeatedly gone above and beyond to achieve the nigh-impossible.
 
In the comics, her skin is supposed to be golden, like someone with a good tan. Pop a pair of sunglasses on her and she can walk down the street without people wondering if she's from the Jersey Shore or Loompaland.

Exactly--at least in the early years she was seen in public on a number of occasions and nobody really noticed, other than she was a strikingly beautiful woman. She should have had green eyes throughout though, even when not using her powers. But that's a minor nitpick.
 
Here's how you do Green Lantern without a features-sized budget:
* Treat it like a "Serialized Procedural" (i.e. Elementary, iZombie, or ANGEL) by centering it on the adventures and exploits of a single Green Lantern and giving it an episodic format with a broader overarching plot that runs through the season in the background

* When you do bring in other members of the Corps, limit their number to a handful of "key" characters

* Give the GLC members you feature - including the central protagonist - a "core" set of constructs that they tend to useRenee

You don't have to sacrifice the things that make the Green Lantern Corps cool in order to make the property work on a television budget; you just need to know how to maximize the medium to tell the story you want to tell.
 
Most of the really significant non-human GLs probably would be fairly easy to do with makeup and prosthetic.
 
Here's how you do Green Lantern without a features-sized budget:
* Treat it like a "Serialized Procedural" (i.e. Elementary, iZombie, or ANGEL) by centering it on the adventures and exploits of a single Green Lantern and giving it an episodic format with a broader overarching plot that runs through the season in the background

* When you do bring in other members of the Corps, limit their number to a handful of "key" characters

* Give the GLC members you feature - including the central protagonist - a "core" set of constructs that they tend to useRenee

You don't have to sacrifice the things that make the Green Lantern Corps cool in order to make the property work on a television budget; you just need to know how to maximize the medium to tell the story you want to tell.
Not really interested in seeing a GL teamed with the local PD solving the murder of the week.
 
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