Voices From Krypton

SMALLVILLE Q&A, PART 1

SMALLVILLE Q&A, PART 2

DC'S GREGORY NOVECK, PART 2: "MAN OF STEEL" & "JUSTICE LEAGUE"

by Edward Gross

With an announcement of casting reportedly coming within the next couple of weeks, director George Miller’s take on Justice League should be in front of the cameras in Australia early next year for a 2009 release. In the second part of our interview with DC’s Gregory Noveck, we discuss the power of the Justice League script written by Kiernan and Michele Mulroney, as well as the fate of Bryan Singer’s sequel to Superman Returns, Man of Steel. Look for Noveck’s views of the new line of made-for-DVD DC animated movies, particularly Justice League: New Frontier, in the next issue of Movie Magic magazine (on sale December 17^th) and, at about the same time, on this site.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: There are so many rumors on the Internet, including that Bryan Singer’s Man of Steel is not happening. Is that film still on the table?

GREGORY NOVECK: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Well, the word is that it’s been put on “indefinite hold” because of Justice League.

GREGORY NOVECK: That’s not true. The reason that Justice League is powering forward first is because the script came in and it was phenomenal.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: It’s really that good?

GREGORY NOVECK: It is, and that very rarely happens in Hollywood on a movie of this scale, and when it does you have no choice but to say, “We’d better catch lightning in a bottle and go!” All of a sudden, six months later, who knows what’s going to happen? You want to hold on to those writers, you’ve got massive interest from directors, you land someone like George Miller, so you go. And in the middle of it all, you’ve got Bryan going off to make another movie, which was a passion project of his. When he comes back, we’ll dive right in to Man of Steel. We’re scripting and it’s going to happen. We’re not going to make it until the script is great, but we’ll get there one way or the other and it’s not going to take nine years.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I think Bryan has said this himself, but the difference between Superman Returns and Man of Steel needs to be the difference between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan.

GREGORY NOVECK: I think that’s accurate, absolutely. But I think what Superman Returns did was that, at the very least, it brought the character back to the forefront and got people talking about him. The thing with Batman is that Batman will always be cool because he’s an iteration of your Id. He a cool, dark character who has the cool toys, has no remorse and yet there’s a moral line that he won’t cross. Plus he’s got a great, tragic back story. You never have to worry about Batman going out of style because of those elements. With Superman there’s always that thing that he’s not cool anymore, he’s got the blue suit and the red cape and he’s such a product of his era. How do you update it? But I think one of the things that Bryan was really successful at conveying in the movie, is that you don’t need to update that. It’s iconography that’s so universal at this point, that you just have to maintain it. Now does that mean you can have a more action-packed story and play up the relationships? Of course, but it doesn’t mean let’s have Versace design the cape.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: And you don’t have to, as Jon Peters tried to do for 10 years, get him out of the costume or depower him.

GREGORY NOVECK: No, because I think the minute you do that, you’ve screwed up and it’s no longer Superman. That was the problem with so much of the development of the project for years.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I liked Superman Returns, but like I said, I should have loved it and I couldn’t.

GREGORY NOVECK: Look, I totally understand the criticism. For me, it was such a struggle to get to that point and I thank God every day that Bryan said, “I want to do it,” because he at least came in with a respect for the character.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Earlier you mentioned how strong the Justice League script was, which I’m glad to hear, because, again, the Internet is alive with people screaming that given the speed at which it’s coming together, there’s no way it can be good.

GREGORY NOVECK: No, we’re rushing it because the script came in so good. There was no mandate that we had to go and make this movie. What created the mandate was you had a strong script with all of these characters and there’s a window, so you go and do it.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I was just surprised because these writers seemed to come out of nowhere.

GREGORY NOVECK: To the greater populatce the Mulroneys seemed to come out of nowhere, but they were fairly accomplished within Hollywood and they were responsible for a lot of great stuff in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. What’s great about Kiernan and Michele is that they came in – Kiernan was a comic reader as a kid, but hadn’t followed it for a long time – and approached it with an understanding that the characters are characters that deserve some reverence. They are very much character writers. All of the conflict and everything else has to come from a place of character, and the action is second. The movie is action-packed, there’s a ton of stuff, but it’s not like the typical Hollywood blockbuster where it’s, like, “Oh, big action sequence. And why do we care?” I think part of the reason that so many responded so strongly to the script is because you just have these wonderful interactions between the characters. And this apart from the plot, which is strong and makes sense and tracks and people, when they see the movie, will be able to say, “Okay, I totally understand how all this can happen within this world.” I think part of the reason you go is that you want to see Superman and Batman have a conversation. And what is that conversation? You want to see how all of these men react when Wonder Woman first walks on screen. If you’re a normal, red-blooded male or even a Martian-blooded mail, what does it mean to be confronted by this goddess?

VOICES FROM KRYPTON It’s like Ursula Andress coming out of the water in Dr. No.

GREGORY NOVECK: Exactly. And the Mulroneys really understood that each one of these characters automatically changes the dynamic of the room as soon as they walk in, because they all have such different powers and back stories. They approached each one of these characters as an individual and as a unique character that influences everything else around them.

FOR PART ONE OF THIS INTERVIEW, JUST CLICK HERE.

CHECK OUT OUR SISTER SITE JUSTICE LEAGUE ON FILM, BY CLICKING HERE.

DAVID YATES: GRAPPLING WITH GRAWP

Talk about baptism by fire! On director David Yates' first day on the set of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix he found himself shooting a sequence involving Hagrid's half-brother Grawp -- a 100% CG character (and a giant to boot) who would be added later in post-production. In this interview, Yates reflects on what the experience was like.

MEDIA GEEK: A JUSTICE LEAGUE NIGHTMARE

[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

YOUNG INDIANA JONES ON DVD: BEHIND THE SCENES

by Edward Gross

While fans of Indiana Jones may not hold the spin-off TV series, Young Indiana Jones, in the same regard they hold the big-screen version of the character, it’s nonetheless a project that is dear to George Lucas’ heart, as will be evident to anyone checking out Paramount’s first collection of episodes released on DVD next week. Most notably, check out the in depth historical documentaries that accompany the episodes themselves to fully grasp his original inspiration for the show.
   Back in 1992, Lucas had become intensely interested in education and was developing interactive technology that would make it more interesting for young students to learn history and geography. Lucas came up with an idea for an educational CD-ROM he called A Walk Through Early Twentieth Century History with Indiana Jones, but he liked it so much that he decided to turn it into a television series, writing the story for the pilot episode himself. 
    The result, which aired on ABC from 1992 to 1994, was not your typical episodic fare. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was perhaps the most ambitious television show ever launched: It was a series of short motion pictures rather than conventional hour-long episodes, and it attracted big-league Hollywood writers and directors, such as Jonathan Hensleigh, Nicolas Roeg, Frank Darabont and Simon Wincer. At the center of it all was Lucas, whose enthusiasm for the series was palpable.
   Through the course of the series, audiences would meet Indiana Jones at a number of different ages, most notably as a small child (as portrayed by Corey Carrier), a late teen (Sean Patrick Flanery, Greg Stillson of the TV series based on Stephen King’s The Dead Zone) and an elderly man (George Hall). As a favor to Lucas, Harrison Ford reprised the role in a framing sequence for one episode.
   Frank Darabont, who wrote and directed The Shawshank Redemption and the forthcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist, believes Lucas’ passion for the project grew out of a new-found liberty. He postulates that the mini-mogul  felt that Lucasfilm and its many limbs reached a level of prosperity – both creatively and financially – that would allow him to step back from CEO duties and concentrate on being a filmmaker again.

EXCLUSIVE: JAMES TUCKER ON THE JUSTICE LEAGUE INFLUENCE ON THE LEGION

With the Legion of Superheroes in its second season, it's become obvious to fans that the show has gone through a number of changes. As producer James Tucker explains in this exclusive interview, he has brought his experience on the Justice League much more to bear on the show.

BEWARE THE POWER OF CHAD VADER!

EXCLUSIVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH DC'S GREGORY NOVECK

Gregory Noveck, Senior Vice President Creative Affairs for DC Comics, is, among other things, the liaison between DC and Warner Bros., integral in the process of finding appropriate properties for the studio to adapt as features and television series. What follows is an excerpt from a recent interview Voices From Krypton conducted with him, which looks at the relationship between the two entities and moves into discussions of the idea of multiple actors playing characters like Superman and Batman simultaneously, and why Tom Welling won't be playing the Man of Steel in Justice League.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: When one of these film or TV projects gets going, how strong is the connection between DC and the studio?
GREGORY NOVECK: As I’ve grown in the job, it’s gotten more and more. It’s not necessarily a testament to me, it’s more an understanding that we bring a lot to the table. It’s also on a case-by-case basis and it’s really driven by the filmmakers. In the case of Christopher Nolan and Bryan Singer, they really want to know what DC thinks. Zack Snyder on Watchmen has been phenomenal. So the studio kind of responds to the filmmaker. In the last several years, even with Al and Miles on Smallville, they’ve hired people who actually have a reverence for the material and it all kind of drives from there. On Watchmen they ask for any kind of material we have that they can use for reference, because they really want to match the look and feel of those characters. We’re very involved in all of this stuff. I’m not going to sit here and say, “Bryan took all of these tips from me,” because that’s not true. I think certainly we’re in a much different place than we were with Batman & Robin or Catwoman. The thing that needs to be kept in mind is that beyond the actual film or TV show, there’s a global brand to be managed here and DC is in the unique position of knowing where the vast majority of all of the moving parts are.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Do you guys ever throw up red flags when something doesn’t seem right? I’m not sure what your feeling was about Superman Returns. My feeling has been that it was good, but it should have been great.
GREGORY NOVECK: If they wanted to make Superman’s cape blue, for example, we’d say, “You can’t do that.” If they wanted it where Clark Kent never wears glasses, that’s an issue. If the relationship between Lois and Clark felt false, we could comment on that. It’s not that we can’t say, “Hey, could there be more action in this movie?” We can, but it’s not really our call, it’s up to the filmmaker. The thing about Superman Returns is that at the end of the day it’s a recognizable Superman and a recognizable Superman movie. There’s nothing in the movie except where maybe the strictest fans would say, “Superman would never do that.” If you’d seen the previous iterations of the script, from my standpoint we were really successful. Is it at the same level of movie that Batman Begins was? Probably not, but it’s a different animal, yet both of those are recognizable as those characters.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I’ve read some of those earlier versions of the Superman script – Tim Burton as director? Nicolas Cage as Superman? What were they thinking? Even earlier today, there was the Hollywood Reporter story where they’re saying that 19 and 20 years olds are auditioning for Justice League. Does that kind of thing concern you guys at all?
GREGORY NOVECK: Don’t believe everything you read. Some of it may be true, some of it may not be. But I can tell you they’re not casting a 19-year-old as Superman. Most of the actors they’re looking at are in their late ‘20s.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: And then there are all of those Internet rumors about Tom Welling being cast as Superman…
GREGORY NOVECK: Not happening, if for no other reason than it would just confuse the issue.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: And if that’s the case, I wonder why they wouldn’t just use Brandon Routh again.
GREGORY NOVECK: I think part of it is that the character is larger than the actor. If you look at Batman, Superman and Justice League as separate franchises, if all of a sudden you have Brandon in it but you don’t have Christian, then what movie is it? I think you have to have it stand on its own. I’m just speculating, but if I’m the director of this movie, I don’t want to have to be too careful of another director’s iteration of a character. If I use his actor, then I’m kind of beholden to it. What if George Miller hired Brandon and Christian, but he wanted Brandon to really play Superman tougher and wanted Christian to show more humanity, then all of a sudden you’re entering very strange creative territory. The same is true of using Tom Welling. I think ultimately it’s a better movie if you have different actors to keep the iterations of the characters distinct. The example I’ve been using is, is it the Mike Mignolia Batman versus the Frank Miller Batman? It’s still Batman, they’re just different versions of it. I think when we start to open up the films with that kind of lens, where you can say, “These are all Superman, but they’re different versions” – even from Tom Welling to Brandon Routh, right? – that’s pretty cool.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I guess Smallville fans imagined the show would end and that cast would make the leap to the big screen and Tom would become Superman. But then you get Brandon Routh on the big screen, so you make that separation. But now we have to accept a second movie version in Justice League…
GREGORY NOVECK: I don’t really see it as a conflict. And it’s better for the actors, frankly. If there are a couple of guys playing Batman or Superman, at least those guys don’t get pigeon-holed for the rest of their careers.

READ PART 2 OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH GREGORY NOVECK BY CLICKING HERE.

CHECK OUT OUR SISTER-SITE, JUSTICE LEAGUE ON FILM BY CLICKING HERE.

SCOTT PORTER AS SUPERMAN?

If the rumors are to be believed, one possibility for the role of Superman in Justice League is 28-year-old Scott Porter. Born on July 14, 1979 in Omaha, Nebraska, he portrays Jason Street in the NBC series Friday Night Lights. Earlier he was part of the original cast of the Off-Broadway show Altar Boyz. In 2006 he played Casey Hughes in four episodes of As the World Turns, guest starred on Ugly Betty and had roles in the features Music and Lyrics and Descent. Coming in 2008 are the feature films Prom Night (a remake ) and Speed Racer, in which he plays Rex Racer.