'Green Lantern' producer Donald De Line has sat down with The Hollywood Reporter and talks about the importance of the recent panel and footage after going so long with virtual silence from the movie besides some promo-art here and there and a whole whack of merchandise.
Heat Vision: How important was the panel?
Donald De Line: It was very important. We've had a very tight post- production schedule. We have over 1500 visual effects shots in this movie, which is a lot. And we have to convert to 3D. That pushes your schedule up even tighter so they can go through this painstaking conversion process. You want to do it with the right quality so you need a lot of lead time. Those things conspired to make what seemed like a decent amount of post feel like incredibly pressured.
This was important because when we went to Comic-Con last summer, we were still shooting. We didn't have any shots or any visual effects to show. This was very important because we finally had something to put in front of people. We showed people what we have finished with visual effects, though only 80 percent was technically finished. Some of it is still work-in-progress.
Heat Vision: So in the overall process of Green Lantern, where are you?
De Line: We have 50 percent of our shots left to finish.
Heat Vision: Was the silence making you been nervous at all?
De Line: Of course. Any time you make a movie, you¹re nervous about every detail. And Warners is a great studio in terms of marketing and they know how to do it. But my frustration, and the nervous-making part of it, was that we literally didn¹t have enough of the finished effects footage to deliver to them so they could get materials out in front. But that's changing finally. We'll be on Thor with the new trailer. It was really thrilling to be in the room and feel it with the fans.
Heat Vision: The footage seems to open up the comic book movie in a way that I don¹t think has been done before.
De Line: That¹s what¹s been exciting to begin with. You have this superhero genre and you get to take it into space, go to the center of the universe where you have all these alien cultures represented. You get the best of superhero-meets-space opera, in a way. And you get to bring both of those elements together and it¹s the kind of thing that I think that makes it different.
In a world that is becoming increasingly populated with superhero movies, and everyone is going "Gosh, there's a lot this summer" and "Is there room for all of us?" we all can say we offer something different. Thor stands on his own with one kind of world, we are an entirely different world. And Captain America is another kind of world. So I say were all very distinct.
Heat Vision: The Green Lantern movie is to lay the foundation for a whole line of superhero movies from Warners. Will there be an connections to the future Superman movie or the Justice League movie?
De Line: We didn¹t do that but there some little references to what could be outcroppings from the Green Lantern Corps, because as you know, the Green Lantern Corps went on to become a lot of different offshoots and have different aspects. And we're already working on s sequel script so we have a cool story idea that we think will go in a direction they don't expect.
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