Diane Nelson is almost fresh off of the Harry Potter franchise for Warner Bros. and Geoff Johns is an accomplished fan-favorite comic-book writer who has never set foot in a Studio before.
So one has at least worked on a big time production, not a Comic Book Movie production but a production non the less, and the other has no Movie making experience at all. These two certainly seem like the odd couple of movie making partners but the formula might just work. Opposites attract, one hand washes the other, are just a few terms that can be used to describe Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns.
The past decade Marvel has kicked the pants off of DC films to a tune of $8 billion including fan favorite Spider-Man and the X-Men franchise's.
Walking down the Marvel Red Carpet gave Johns certain incentive:
"You look at that success ... it makes you want to achieve the same sort of thing but do it in our own way," Johns said. "They've done great things and now we want to do great things."
Nelson and Johns will be responsible for everything DC related. Look at them as DC Movie Shepard's, or as Ryan Reynolds stated:
"'Integrity officer' is a great way to describe them," Reynolds said. "He's quality control in terms of the source material and making sure we use it in the right way. If something doesn't sit well with Geoff, then everyone knows that's worthy of sounding an alarm."
This coming Saturday they will experience their first test at the Comic-Con. Martin Campbell's Green Lantern footage will be shown to audiences for the first time.
"Lantern" is the first film made with the new DC team in place and Johns will be right up there on stage with director Martin Campbell, Reynolds and other cast members. Far from an interloper, Johns was an essential sounding board on matters of plot, tone, character design and visual effects, the film team said.
The biggest challenge off course will prove to be how to bring the unknown roster of DC characters to the big screen and get the more mainstream movie goers to recognize and relate to these unknown characters:
"It's no small challenge how few people have heard of these properties or understand their stories outside of fans of comic books," Diane said. "Sometimes the comic-book fans who love this stuff want us to get too precious about this stuff and if we do, we'll kill it off. We need to figure out how to evolve and grow it and bring it to more people."
Johns who has been a Green Lantern fan all of his life got a chance to visit the set last month and mentioned that set visit was the highlight of his professional career:
"To see a movie set for a character that I had spent so much time and creative energy on and to see it actually get shot, it was amazing. And more than that, I had been dreaming of seeing a Green Lantern movie since I was 8 years old."
It's kinda strange to wrap your mind around the fact that before Iron Man and The Avengers came into play, Warner Bros. never had a DC Movie Masterpiece Game Plan. Now, modeling after Marvel's success, Warner Bros. knows that integrating and combining all the Super Hero elements are essential to growing and introducing unknown Super heroes into a modern movie going era to people who will not be familiar with them. Like what Marvel is doing!
You can check out the entire article from The Olympian HERE!
