Arrowverse crossover boss: We pitched "Crisis on Infinite Earths," not "Crisis on CW Earths"

Rolling Stone

Marc Guggenheim, who oversees the five-episode Arrowverse crossover premiering Sunday, wanted to go all-out in bringing in DC Comics show stars that predate his and Greg Berlanti's CW shows, including Smallville's Tom Welling and Erica Durance, Batman's Burt Ward and Ashley Scott from The WB's short-lived Birds of Prey. "We had to do it,” Guggenheim tells Rolling Stone. “When we pitched this to the studio and network, we said, ‘This is Crisis on Infinite Earths, not Crisis on CW Earths.' We felt that to honor the original concept, we had to touch as many strands of the DC tapestry as possible." Guggenheim explained which strands of DC Comics past to use. “That was a very complex matrix," he says. "Some of them were pie-in-the-sky kind of ideas, some of them were educated guesses in terms of who we thought might want to participate. Every day was an emotional roller coaster: This person says yes, this person says no. Or, This person says yes, but we can’t afford them. There were certain characters who were approved by DC Entertainment, and then there were some where we were told absolutely not.” Guggenheim also explained the complicated logistics of making "Crisis on Infinite Earths." “There’s television, there’s theatrical, there’s the comic book side, and everyone has to agree,” Guggenheim says. “There’s a lot of email diplomacy that goes on. And then I had to have a creative conversation with Brandon (Routh), to see if this was something he was interested in doing. I didn’t have to twist Brandon’s arm. But I presented DC with a wish list of characters and concepts that we wanted to reference, (and) we worked it out. Certainly, this is the broadest we’ve gotten into the greater DC Universe.”

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