Talking to
Newsarama, producer of the upcoming
Green Lantern: The Animated Series Giancarlo Volpe has revealed a ton of new details about the show. There's much, much more to be found over at the site (including how much of the series will be set in space) by clicking on the link below.
Green Lantern: The Animated Series will debut this coming Friday at 7 pm on Cartoon Network.
On The Inclusion Of The Red Lanterns In The Upcoming Series:
I guess that partially had something to do with the fact that Geoff Johns is so involved with DC creative right now. When I was brought on for this project, it was already sort of decided that it would be Red Lanterns, but I wouldn't be if surprised if Geoff maybe made that suggestion. I actually really kind of believe in keeping it modern and keeping it current. If we would have gotten a little too nostalgic, then I think that the show would have contradicted the comics, or felt like a different world. The ideal is that kids will watch the show and see Atrocitus and Zilius Zox as Red Lanterns, and Kilowog as a green, and hopefully fall in love with them, and then they can go to the comics and see further adventures — and vice versa.
On The Relationship Between The Live Action Movie And Animated Series:
I got to read the script for the Green Lantern feature, and that was about it. It's not like we were on the phone with each other once a week. That's the level of hooking up that we could do. I think probably one of the most obvious — and this isn't a huge spoiler — differences between our show and the movie is that in the movie, Carol Ferris finds out that Hal Jordan is the Green Lantern, whereas in ours she doesn't know. So that alone sort of breaks any continuity. At the same time, it does feature Kilowog, it features the Guardians, it features Carol Ferris. Hal is a test pilot on Earth. It does feel like the same world. So if anyone did watch the movie and wanted more, the show sort of takes the baton, but just takes it in a much more sci-fi level. It's more in space than it is on Earth.
On Whether We'll See Any Of The Other Corps:
To me, just the fact that if you make a show about Green Lanterns, and you say there are Red Lanterns, even a five-year-old kid would go, "Well, are there Blue Lanterns?" It just seems like a natural question people would ask. That stuff gets weaved in. Sinestro is a little bit of a tricky thing because we were asked not to use him very much at the time we were developing the show, because at that time his destiny wasn't completely decided in how they wanted to play him in the future. Now that I've seen it, and the final scene is pretty obvious what's going to happen to with him — that may give us some license in the future to get him.
On The Chances Of Seeing The Other Human Lanterns - Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner And John Stewart:
Someone asked me that at Comic-Con, and my response was basically, "As long as the show is a hit, and it keeps going, sure." I would imagine we would have to at some point. With the CG restrictions, we have this very short wishlist of who we actually bring onto the show. We can't just load it up with every human Green Lantern — but we would like to. And I understand that everyone has their favorite. It's definitely on our radar.
On The Decision To Make The Show CGI:
There's this misunderstand on the Internet that CG is less expensive than traditional, and that's actually really not the case at all. CG is actually — I would say, ballpark, twice as expensive as traditional. It's quite an investment and a commitment to decide to do a show in CG. But the beauty of CG was obviously that you can get very dynamic lighting, and you can get very dynamic camera angles, and I think that lighting and camera angles can really make a sci-fi show soar. One of the challenges, though, is that in CG you actually have to be very prudent with how many models you build. Every character, every set, every prop is money. We have to kind of tell these stories very economically, which is one of the Catch-22s — the very nature of the show is that they go planet to planet and explore these entirely different civilizations, entirely different species, and so every time that happens we have to create this new set, this new planet, and this new species. It can be challenging, for sure.
About The Author:
Comic Book Reader. Film Lover. WWE and F1 Fan. Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic and ComicBookMovie.com's #1 contributor.