ComingSoon.net/SHH had a opportunity to sit down with the producer and co-writer of the upcoming
Green Lantern film, Greg Berlanti. He shares great answers to questions regarding his involvement in plans for a potential sequel, the progress of
The Flash treatment, and gives a quick update on what he's focusing on at the moment.
"We are working on the treatment for the second [Green Lantern] film actually, we just started working on that with the same guys who I did the original with. (Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim) Those two guys are also writing a script based on a treatment we wrote for 'The Flash,' so that's my involvement with DC right now is the script for 'The Flash' and the treatment for 'GL2'."
On the tone of the movies, as well as how they'll bring the mythology from the comics into the movie universe, Berlanti says:
"'GL' is always a bit lighter than that on earth but mixed with a twinge of the space opera, which has its own epic qualities to it. 'Flash' as we're getting into it is interesting, too. Though Barry Allen was a little lighter in the comic, I think because of the nature that he was a CSI and moved in this world of crime before this stuff happened. I think it's tonally somewhere in between 'GL' and 'Dark Knight.' It's actually a little bit darker than when we were working on ('GL), because you're dealing with somebody who is already a crimefighter in a world of those kinds of criminals and that kind of murder and homicide. I find you talk a lot about different films when you're working on a film, and we spend a lot more time talking about 'Se7en' or 'The Silence of the Lambs' as we construct that part of Barry's world, then I thought when we got into it. It helps balance a guy in a red suit who runs really fast."
On which aspects of the Flash comics might make it into the first movie, particularly about the Rogues' Gallery and the time travel aspect of the comics:
"A third thing I'd throw at you is alternate dimensions, so it's true that we want to find the things that make it… With 'GL,' we used to say there's a space opera component and then there's the down on earth. In 'The Flash,' there's the sci-fi component and there's the crime component and it's fitting those two things together, and the sci-fi thing, we obviously want to nail that and honor that and do that in a way that feels visceral and real and cool and probably more in the tone of 'The Matrix" films or things like that. I always think of 'The Flash' stories where he met Jay Garrick and knows there was Earth Prime and things like that. There's an avenue for these films to broaden the DC Film Universe in that way, so that's the hope."
"When we have the script together, I'll probably sit down with Warner Bros. and want to decide what's best for that movie. It's so hard when you're working on the material, the script too, because if I thought about it just as a director I would freak myself out but when I think about it just as a writer, we try so many different things. It's like, 'I don't even know how we're going to do that but what if we did this or what if we showed this?' It's more freeing and liberating so I haven't really thought beyond the script right now for it."
It's great to know that they have an ideal-tone for The Flash, in between
TDK &
GL, showing that things are really progressing. We're all aware of the dark tone of
The Dark Knight, but we'll know
Green Lantern's when it hits theaters June 17, next year!