As Gondry explains it, he's actually been involved with this project, on and off, since 1996, and the real question is WHY he wanted to film this character.
"I think I was attracted to a project of this size," he admits. "I saw that there was a spirit I could relate to in those stories. Also, there weren't a lot of movies in the '90s I could relate to, but in the '80s there were films like Back to the Future, which seemed more imaginative and creative. The characters were not so serious and the spirit was a little more playful. In the projects I was receiving, they were too serious and pretentious. The Green Hornet has the dimension of being playful that I really like."
He also noted much of the public skepticism that followed the announcement that Seth Rogen would be playing the lead character; a skepticism he chalks up to people having a preconceived notion of how the character should be played.
"Everybody has their own vision in their mind, so when you put somebody like Seth in the character, of course it's going to surprise some of the people who have an idea of who the character should be. But I could quickly see that Seth was taking his character very seriously, though he's funny of course -- the movie is funny -- but we were not making a spoor of this genre. The stakes are like they are in any of these types of movies, and the action is very strong. But what I like about Seth is that he's very human, he plays this lack of confidence that I found touching and could identify with. It doesn't make him the typical superhero."