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Home , Everwood, Greg Berlanti

Showrunner Wants to Bring Drama (and More Superheroes) to Your Screen

06.09.2015

Greg Berlanti is a busy man.

This fall, he will have six - count them, six - broadcast network series on the air.

The producer/writer/showrunner behind The , , The Mysteries of Laura, and soon , DC's and Blindspot spoke Tuesday at PromaxBDA: The Conference in LA about his inspiration, and often more importantly, motivation.

The prolific TV producer, who also has the feature film Pan out this October, was known as a teen drama writer when he worked on Dawson's Creek and , before he switched genres to family drama and comic books. Now, he's the one expanding the DC Comics universe across The CW.

But it wasn't always comic books for Berlanti. When he was young, he says he aimed to be a puppeteer and his hero was .

"Muppets is up against this year, so that's devastating," he said, lamenting that inspiration will be competing against his newest hit. Puppeteering, he says, gave him excellent training in creating character and story arcs - "it helped me become a better storyteller."

Now, Berlanti says, those skills help him straddle genres in shows that involve comedy, drama, action, romance and some superpowers on the side.

"Especially in this day and age when everything's so bifurcated," Berlanti said, "and everyone watches their own show on their own device, I just want to keep the conversation going. Keep viewers engaged and talking to one another."

Superheroes was the one genre he identified with that he felt he could use to bring back the idea of watching TV together as a family, he told Warner Bros. Television Group's Chief Marketing Officer Lisa Gregorian, who interviewed him onstage.

"Superheroes had a whole level of promise," he said. "I'd walk into the comic book shop and be whisked away into somewhere else, imagining myself in that world. It was a safe place for me as a kid, an exploratory one. Now we're helping bring those stories to a new generation of kids that are imagining themselves in those worlds."

He started working with DC Comics (the comic book giant that owns not only The Flash and Arrow but also Superman and Batman) with the film.

After that ended up in a direction he hadn't anticipated, DC approached Berlanti about other possible characters in the DC universe that he might be interested in. Berlanti immediately pointed to .

"Arrow seemed to ripe to be a TV show," he said. "There's a crime narrative, justice, family drama. My biggest requirement was that it could be something that we would want to watch ourselves."

The Flash, which debuted to the best ratings for The CW in five years, is also the staple of the network's growing DC world. This fall will see its spinoff DC's Legends of Tomorrow adding to the network's superhero lore (and hopefully just as impressive ratings).

"The Flash was always my favorite character," Berlanti said. "I was really protective and possessive of it. Even though we did Arrow first, I don't think the technology was in place that first year to do The Flash."

He added that, while The Flash has always been a personal favorite, he had his misgivings.

"We went into making the with a real question mark of 'Are the visual effects going to work on a TV budget, a TV schedule?'" said Berlanti. "That was the fun experiment of the pilot." Berlanti says part of the success of his comic book-based shows (Arrow and The Flash, so far) is that they defy genre.

"Often, a drama is a drama and comedies are straight comedies," he said. "For me personally, when we do a superhero show, it's hopefully filled with drama and heart and humor - that what life is, and I think it makes richer. The drama makes the comedy funnier, and vice versa."

Hre says that this "hodge podge" makes the shows better because it makes them unpredictable.

"My advice is what's the show if take the super out of it?" he said. The Flash is really about a father and his son. Supergirl is at its heart a story about two sisters struggling with who they are.

Selling those genre-defying shows to audiences is another story.

"When I look at a piece of marketing," he said, "I try to look at it as though I was deciding what to pick to watch that week, and I'll often offer those thoughts. I only know this as an audience member, but maybe this feels very different from the show we're creating, or this might be a false promise. I try to approach it as a fan on the outside."

Social media, while it wasn't always a part of his repertoire, has become an important piece of feedback as well.

He says that on Dawson's Creek, the team got fan mail once a month. Fan pages and websites were just starting up around that time. The response now is immediate - and everywhere.

"Online, you've got your own focus group, really," said Berlanti. "It can be really informative of which stories or twists and turns you thought might work or might not work. But you can evolve things, you can change things."

And not all bad feedback is bad - sometimes fans don't like a story arc because they just don't want that couple to get together or they don't want to lose a character, but that's a good sign. It means they've engaged with those characters enough to care.

So what's next for the television producer with six shows? How does one even run six shows?

"I actually don't know yet," he said. "I'm trying to figure that out right now as we speak. I do think everybody has to do multiple things. To move stuff ahead, you've got to keep a lot of pots on the stove. "

Berlanti added that he hopes what is next for him is "more of the same." He's progressed through the industry taking jobs that he never expected and choosing directions he would never have predicted.

"All the best stuff that's happened to me in the business I hadn't thought would," he said. "There are two trains in this business. There are the trains you imagine will come into the station and then there's the train that comes in. If you're so focused on the train you think will come in, you'll miss the one that's there."

Photo credit: Image Group LA