To mark the release of
Annabelle Comes Home on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital platforms in the UK this week, we recently caught up with writer and director Gary Dauberman. However, as you might expect, we had to take the opportunity to ask the filmmaker about his work on
Swamp-Thing, the DC Universe TV series that was cancelled after just a single season.
Fans continue to campaign to #SaveSwampThing on social media, and when we asked Dauberman what the plan was for season two, he revealed that we would have seen weirder, standalone stories.
"I was heartbroken over [the cancellation] because I think, creatively, we – and I say "we" but mostly mean the other people because Mark Verheiden was really the captain of the ship and he did such a bang up job of it – the show came out of a love for the source material because we really loved the books, especially the Alan Moore run. He's one of my heroes, of course. Really, everyone involved just fell in love with the source material and the characters and I think that shows in the episodes. I think if you're interested in what the other seasons were going to be like, you can go back to the source material."
"Season one is very much like a movie in that it has a beginning, middle, and end, and is one story told over the course of ten episodes and what I liked a lot about the comics is that there's like werewolf in a hospital and things like that, so we would have had episodes like an anthology with standalone stories. The swamp is very much the kitchen sink of supernatural terror and, as you know, you can go into different subgenres of horror with that and I was really looking forward to exploring that in season two and getting into some of the more twisted horror tales from the later comics. It just would have got weirder. For people who don't know the character, season one was telling people what Swamp-Thing was all about but season two was going to be more about getting into the deeper, twisted, weirder, and gross ideas."
That sounds like it could have been amazing, and it became clear during our conversation that Swamp-Thing was a project Dauberman was extremely passionate about and is grateful for the love the show receives. Now, with it looking unlikely that the series will be resurrected, would the filmmaker be interested in writing or directing another DC Comics project on the big screen, perhaps?
"For sure," he confirmed.
"Comic books in a lot of ways were the thing that made me fall in love with movies. I still read comics every week and again it would have to be the right thing but I would love to still play around in the DC Universe because I love so many of those characters and there are so many great ones that I would love to spearhead any stories within that universe."
"There's a lot of cool things there. The short answer is, 'Yes!'"
For now, he's busy working in
The Conjuring Universe, but after teaming up with Andy Muschietti on the two
IT movies, it's possible he could reunite with him to take a crack at
The Flash! We'll just have to wait and see...