The highly anticipated animated film
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths is available in stores now, and Newsarama had the opportunity to catch up with it's executive producer Bruce Timm to discuss what DC Entertainment has on their docket.
Can you talk a bit about 'Spectre' and what you guys have coming up with the shorts?
"The short version is that there are all these great DC comics characters out there that aren't necessarily able to support giving them a feature film of their own. But there are terrific characters like The Spectre and Jonah Hex...and somebody here had the brilliant idea of doing a series of shorts about these characters...I've been a fan of The Spectre for years and years and years, and never really found a way to work him into my previous shows. But when we decided to come up with a list of who we would do for this series of shorts, The Spectre was way high on my list. And again, since these movies are being aimed at the PG-13, young adult audience, it allowed us to do The Spectre in the way that I think we should do The Spectre which is based on the seventies version of him by Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo, where he's like the really scary, dark and violent avenger of evil. So it was all perfect timing. And Steve Niles came to our attention. Todd Casey who works here as one of our staff writers has known Steve for years and mentioned him as a possible guy to write the script. And Steve is really good at crime fiction and he's really good at horror stories, so it was perfect casting. "
is coming up next, are there any details you can spill beyond what we know from the comic?
"Well, I don't know how much of it I can talk about specifically, even though it's an open secret based on a comic that's already in print. But it's a pretty dark, intense, mystery/drama/action story. It's funny, in broad strokes when I look at it, it's kind of like a weird cross between Mask of the Phantasm and (Batman Beyond:) Return of the Joker in that it deals a lot with...it's kind of a personal story for Batman. Not just an 'Oh, he's fighting the Joker again,' or 'Oh, he's fighting the Riddler or Poison Ivy again.' This is something that's...I don't want to say soap opera, but it does have ramifications, dealing with his history with his junior partners and his worst enemies. So it's an emotionally complex, intense story. I think it's going to be terrific."
Would you ever be involved with an animated version of Green Arrow: Quiver?
"Um...[laughs]...we actually, probably a couple of years ago now...not based on that particular comic, but we had a Green Arrow long form script in development, which was written by a really talented writer called Tab Murphy. He wrote a script that was basically the Green Arrow origin story. It was a really, really great script. We all enjoyed it. The home video people crunched the number and thought that Green Arrow probably wasn't famous enough yet to support his own feature. So we kind of had to put it on the back burner. But we're hoping at some point to be able to make the movie because it's a really, really great script. And he's a character that a lot of us really like. And it gives us a chance to to outside the Batman/Superman mythos and do something a little bit different. Let's keep our fingers crossed."
Is there a story that isn't in development yet that you'd really like to see as an animated film?
"Not off the top of my head. [laughs] I'm super-focused on all of the movies...we usually have like two or three things in production at the same time. And beyond the DVD movies, there are some other animated projects here at Warner Bros. that I'm attached to and developing. I'm so scattered that I can barely focus on, if somebody just gave me five million dollars and said, 'Here. Do your DC dream project,' I'd really have to sit down and think about it. And I haven't really had the opportunity to do that. There are a lot of characters that I like. In my dream world, yeah, I'd love to do a Question feature film. That would be great. I'd love to do a long form Jonah Hex movie. I think that would be awesome. The Black Hawks. I love The Black Hawks. Characters like that. But there isn't one particular story that I'm just champing at the bit to do yet."
Anything in the multitude of secret projects that you've got going on that you can hint at?
"Ah...honestly, no. [laughs] I can't even hint at it, because people are really good at reading between the lines and figuring things out. Some of the upcoming DCU DTV's that we've got coming up are really, really exciting properties. Some of them are original stories and some of them are based on very familiar, famous story lines that, when they are announced, people are going to lose their minds. So we've got some really exciting stuff coming down the pike in the next year or two."
Be sure to check out Newarama's full interview with Timm, where he further discusses casting for
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, his voice cameo in the film and possibility of switching to live action features.