One of the key founders of The CW’s Arrowverse is Marc Guggenheim who co-created and served as co-showrunner on all of “Arrow” but the seventh season, and the first four seasons of “Legends of Tomorrow”.
For years there, the Arrow-verse of shows basically kept The CW network afloat along with giving the DC brand a life outside of the mixed bag that was the post-Nolan films.
Guggenheim also co-created the ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ crossover event from a few years back – a five-hour, six-series event interconnecting many DC screen adaptations to that point and which required gargantuan efforts behind the scenes.
In a newsletter published a few weeks back that’s gaining traction today, he says he was disappointed in not receiving at least a call from new DC Studios chiefs Peter Safran and James Gunn regarding their DC Universe:
“I assumed that they would assemble some kind of brain trust to help facilitate what I assumed – hoped – would be a vision as ambitious as the DC Universe deserves. But I’ll be honest: I would have liked to have gotten at least a meeting.
Not a job, mind you. A meeting. A conversation. A small recognition of what I’d tried to contribute to the grand tapestry that is the DC Universe. I’d only spent nine years toiling in that vineyard, after all.
Although working for DC had been creatively fulfilling, it involved a lot of adversity, challenges, and personal sacrifices – none of which seem to have accrued to any professional benefit. Simply put, the Arrowverse hasn’t led to any other gigs, so it feels – at least on a career level – that I really wasted my time.”
He says fans got it and “loved what we did,” and for that, he remains deeply grateful and says: “Working on these shows, we always reminded ourselves that the opposite of love was not hate, it was apathy, and no matter what, there was never any apathy.”
He makes sure to caveat though with one exception: “Hollywood met everything we did with apathy. Actually, apathy would have been a step up.”
