Nerdist caught up with Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim following the reveal earlier today that a series starring The Atom may be in the works to ask him just how in place those plans really are. "The thing that we’ve been talking about is just how do we further expand the universe; and we love Brandon and we love having him on Arrow," he vaguely responded before being quizzed on the appeal of possibly giving the character and Superman Returns star Brandon Routh his own TV series. "Brandon’s so terrific and embodies the role so well that when we talk about how to further expand things, he’s a natural person to talk about. It’s like Brandon said on the panel, originally when we met with him we just wanted to bring a great character onto the show and we wanted a great actor to play him. That’s really how it always starts. With the exception of Grant Gustin on Arrow last year, there’s never been a [decision] to bring in a character with the intention to spin them off. It’s always, 'What services the show the best?'"
As of right now, the talks are said to be "preliminary", and Guggenheim denied that they've only introduced Ray Palmer in Arrow because they always had a plan to later give him his own series. That goes for the costume too apparently, and it wasn't created with the idea of a spinoff in mind. "No, the costume is just “How do we get it to work on Arrow?” Maya Mani did the design that she always does. It’s her best costume, and that’s really saying something. It’s coming together beautifully. Brandon just did his third fitting with it, and it’s the most ambitious costume we’ve ever done on the show. One of the things I like about it is we did it without consideration of a spinoff. We did it because this is a cool thing to have on Arrow." Asked about how practical the suit is and possible Iron Man comparisons, Guggenheim replied: "Our goal when we had an idea to do a super suit was “How do you do it in a way that’s not Iron Man?” That’s the trick creatively. Because we don’t want to duplicate Iron Man, we want to do our own thing. So there’s a lot of practical elements to the costume that on Iron Man they have done with CG. We’re gonna do it practically." What do you think about these comments? Share your thoughts below.