***UPDATE***: As of December 6, 2013, Nightwing: Prodigal Son is days away from shooting while in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign (donate here!). Below is the interview with the creators of the series originally published March 9, 2013, but stay tuned for more updates about this awesome series!
Are you looking for a new superhero show, but prefer Gotham to Starling City? Sick of Bruce Wayne getting all the attention, but love Batman’s rogue gallery? Want a show made by and for fans of the comics? Then look no further than Nightwing: Prodigal Son, the upcoming fan series from Brady Roberts, JD Buzz, and Pete Powers, among others.
You can check out the awesome trailer for the series here.
I had a chance to speak with Roberts (Dick Grayson/Nightwing) and Powers (Bane) about their involvement in the project, how it came to be, what inspired them, and what we have to look forward to!
AP2HYC: So how did this whole project get started?
Brady Roberts: Well I work pretty regularly in the film industry, and Pete’s in the entertainment industry as well, in professional wrestling and film. I started joking around with it with the director [JD Buzz], from Edmonton, last summer in June, talking about doing something Batman related. We knew a lot of guys that had different costumes and stuff, and he was really good with the CGI. Then we started talking more seriously about it and then we decided to shoot a little trailer.
AP2HYC: So why did you pick Nightwing over doing a Batman film?
Brady: I think the Batman ones are so overdone, and it was nice to see a take on Nightwing. He’s a really popular character and a character that everyone involved was really interested in.
Pete Powers: The other part of that too is that Nightwing and Dick Grayson is such an interesting character to write for, or to try and create a story for. Obviously me and Brady are both very passionate about the books, not just about Batman but the entire story arc, and Dick Grayson plays a massive role in that and he’s just such an interesting character to write for. I have always said that I would always want to do something with Grayson. I think we’ve had that conversation before as well.
Brady: Yeah.
Pete: …where I said I would love to write for Dick Grayson, I would love to do something about Dick Grayson. The thing is, he’s not Batman, and he’s got to deal with a completely other set of emotions, similar emotions, but a completely different set of things that Batman does, and it’s interesting to look at things from his perspective rather than always having it from Batman’s perspective.
Brady: And it’s interesting that that’s never been explored in live-action, either. All the live action takes on Dick Grayson have been pretty poor, in my opinion. Chris O’Donnell, poor to horrible. Dick should be better than Batman, really, because he’s trained by Batman at such a young age. When he’s getting into this mid-twenties age, he should be incredible by this point. And it’s nice to see that.
Pete: If you look at it from a fanboy perspective and you’re thinking about who are our top three ninjas of the DC Universe, you got Batman, you got Deathstroke, and maybe, I don’t know, Lady Shiva as a close three. But Dick Grayson, again is trained by Batman. At what, between age 10 and 12 say, he’s adopted. Okay, Batman’s obviously Batman, he’s the best, but Dick Grayson is being trained by the best at such a young age.
Brady: And at some point the student’s going to pass the teacher.
Pete: You would like to think that.
AP2HYC: So were there any particular comics you were drawing on for source material? I know that the IndieGoGo site mentions that the Batman Animated Series as a big influence.
Brady: Well, I think you can see in the trailer there’s bits from The Killing Joke, I think we’re certainly influenced by Under the Red Hood, that’s another one that was really cool. We’re outlining… I think there’s some confusion there. The trailer is a trailer for a series, not a film.
AP2HYC: I was actually going to ask about that.
Brady: There’s so many characters teased there, because it’s not just one short film of 25 minutes, it’s supposed to be a 10 to 12 episode series.
AP2HYC: So all those villains that do appear in the trailer, won’t all appear in the pilot, they’ll be spaced out throughout those 10-12 episodes.
Brady: Exactly. They would be spaced out. The people who are listed on the IndieGoGo page, they will for sure appear in the pilot, and it mentions a handful of characters on there. But the other villains that are in the trailer that aren’t listed on the IndieGoGo page, they would appear through the series.
AP2HYC: When I was watching the trailer, it reminded me a lot of the Birds of Prey series, and I think that sort of goes along with what you’re saying. It was sort of like you said, it had that bringing the comic book to life kind of feel.
Pete: I think we’re both going for that a little bit too, blending the styles. You know, Arrow and Birds of Prey have been pretty successful as a running episodic TV show, so kind of what we’re gunning for in the long run.
Brady: I also really like the Arkham games, Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. But what I like about those games is they have that kind of more realistic, dark kind of feeling to them, but at the same time the costumes and the looks for the characters are cartoony and closer to the comic book versions. It’s finding that balance between those two aspects.
AP2HYC: The closest thing we have to a Nightwing show at this point, and even this is a bit of a stretch, is the Young Justice series. Do either of you watch the show?
Pete: I love Young Justice, I haven’t seen all the episodes but I’ve seen enough to kind of get a good idea, and I like the way that they’ve done that time jump, and I like the way they’ve done that and the way that Nightwing’s portrayed. He’s a badass. I like the job they’re doing on it, it’s a shame that Young Justice is going to be done pretty soon.
Brady: I haven’t seen a lot of Young Justice, I watch a lot of the animated films that come out. I’ve seen basically every one of those. I haven’t seen a whole lot of Young Justice. I’m a pretty big Green Lantern Animated Series fan, which is unfortunate because I’ve heard that both shows are being cancelled. We’re trying to bring Nightwing in so we have Nightwing to watch somewhere.
Pete: It’s important though, I think we’ve talked about this, Nightwing and Dick Grayson, he’s such a double-edged sword. Nightwing is so badass, like Batman, but at the same time he has that Dick Grayson old-school Robin appeal, like how he’ll crack a joke. Batman, he doesn’t really crack jokes, aside from, you know “Nice coat.” Dick Grayson has a little bit more of a personality as a vigilante, more so than Batman does. Batman obviously has a mystique and is scary as shit, but Nightwing has a little bit more of a personality when he’s in the getup.
AP2HYC: We’ve already touched on this a bit, but obviously the two characters that you both are playing [Dick Grayson and Bane] have been portrayed on screen before. Do you think your performance is influenced by that or are you just trying to ignore it?
Pete: In the film world, and being specifically about Christopher Nolan’s films, they’ve been so well received and they’re so well done, and he is such a good storyteller and he has such a good element of realism within his storytelling as well. He really went to a lot of effort to create a very realistic Batman character, which could be received well by a very widespread movie-going audience and was going to sell really well. And it did, I don’t think anyone would argue that. When Dark Knight Rises, especially speaking particularly about the Bane character, was released, there were a lot of fanboys who go “He doesn’t look like Bane, he looks like this. And he talks weird.” Come on, it’s film. Just relax, it was well done. And they’re shitting all over this product without really giving credit where credit is due. Incredible film, incredible character, played well, I thought, by Tom Hardy. As far as looks go, they obviously changed things about the character and stuff. But I think for us, we wanted to go for a New 52 type of feel and look, and we also wanted to cater to a lot of the fanboys who feel that this is the way they’re drawn them in the comics, this is the look. It’s not realistic. This is a comic book. I understand what they were doing and I liked it a lot, I loved the film, but for us we wanted a bit more of the comic book type of feel, like you’re looking at a comic book, not “This is something that’s real.” Batman isn’t real, it’s a comic book, and therefore we’re portraying the characters that have been drawn in the comic book.
AP2HYC: You mentioned that you were going for the New 52 look. Is that why you chose to go with the red Nightwing costume instead of the classic blue?
Brady: Yeah, yeah. Which was controversial, but I think a lot of things are gonna be controversial when you do anything Batman related.
Pete: The other thing is, a lot times when things get redone, for example the New 52, a lot of people will just boycott it. They’re like “Well I don’t like it, I like the way it was.” A lot of people don’t like change. [They’ll boycott it] instead of reading it and getting down to the material and saying “Wow, this is really well done.” And changing the look a little bit is miniscule, really, as far as storytelling goes. And I like the New 52 a lot.
Brady: Yeah, it’s great. And, I think we posted it on our Facebook group page, but we actually had Kyle Higgins, who writes the New 52 Nightwings, send a message saying how much he liked the trailer, which was really cool. And I think that people need to understand that characters are going to grow and adapt. If they put a little bit of red in his costume, it’s not the end of the world. I mean, look how many Superman costumes and Batman costumes and Wonder Woman costumes there have been over the years.
Pete: He used to wear fairy boots. I mean, come on. Things change. And I think honestly, that it’s not such a big deal. If a company like DC and Warner Bros is relaunching characters and this is the way they look, then obviously on some level it’s going to be more marketable in the long run to cater to that.
AP2HYC: As long as we’re talking about the costumes, one of the things mentioned on the IndieGoGo site that you’re trying to raise money for is to get the costume to look a bit more armored and less just like spandex.
Brady: Right. And that’s kind of a throw to the New 52 Justice League, and the Arkham City games. That armored look is just a lot more functional.
Pete: Even in Higgins’ Nightwing and [Greg] Capullo and [Scott] Snyder’s Batman, they have like the armored gauntlets, they have these new effective and functional costumes that are like, if these guys are fighting crime, they gotta be armored up. I mean, they’re taking a beating out there. You have to have armor, you have to have these gauntlets that are going to deflect swords and whatever else.
AP2HYC: I also have to say that the Bane costume looked amazing and that the Luchador mask was very much true to how Bane has always looked.
Brady: I think that was important for us too because, especially with The Dark Knight Rises, and again, I’m in the same boat as Pete where I enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane, but I felt that it was quite far from the comic book version, so we were pretty intent on having a version of Bane that was very much identical to the comic book version.
Pete: We wanted the tubes and we wanted the arm panel, we wanted the mask and the wrestling boots. He is a wrestler, he’s on steroids, he is very much as he’s drawn. I think that in our trailer, I was really happy with it actually too. I’m glad that you liked it as well because that’s kind of what we’re catering to.
AP2HYC: The trailer shows Dick returning to the circus, are you also going to examine a bit of Grayson’s past?
Brady: What we really like on Arrow and stuff like that is a lot of the flashbacks. I guess we want to incorporate that into the outline of the series. We’ve talked about that multiple times. Flashbacks to his past would definitely be included.
Pete: And also including a modern take on the Haley’s Circus. If you are reading the New 52, I don’t know how much of it you’ve read, so much of the Nightwing story arc and even into Capullo’s Batman, they have a heavy influence. I don’t know if we’re going to go that heavy, but I think it has to be a big part of Dick Grayson’s life because it is. I think we’ll definitely be using a lot of that as well.
AP2HYC: What’s sort of the time period that you see this set? It seems to be that Batman’s not really in the picture here.
Brady: I mean, we’re definitely in our own little timeline and continuity. Some stuff is pulled from the comics, some stuff maybe hasn’t happened yet or hasn’t happened at all, it’s definitely our own continuity that we’re building. We don’t want to have Batman appear at all in that series, I think it would detract and take away from Nightwing being the star.
Pete: Or if he did, it would be much, much later.
Brady: Or flashbacks.
Pete: Yeah, or flashbacks. Maybe his voice, you have him learning from him in a sort of mentor type role. But nothing where he would be like a mainstay character.
AP2HYC: So it’s very much all Nightwing.
Brady: I mean, there’s other stuff, you see Oracle and Alfred, but there’s definitely no Batman.
Pete: And there is other characters, I don’t know how much we want to give away, but there will be other characters also within the family, within the unit. We’re looking at bringing in two that are relevant to the Nightwing story and relevant to the Bat-family. So that’s something that fans will have to look forward to.
Also, you know, we’re looking forward to bringing those characters to life. So that’s exciting.
Brady: And it’s almost like the issues of the comics as well, where you don’t know who’s going to show up necessarily. You could always have an episode where a handful of characters show up and stuff like that. It’s like the comics where it’s a little unpredictable as far as who’s going to be there.
AP2HYC: And obviously it’s such a big universe that you have plenty of characters to choose from.
Brady: Exactly.
AP2HYC: So other than acting in the series, what are you two doing behind the scenes?
Brady: I had sort of spearheaded putting the project together, and then we have a director, who’s based in Edmonton, which is about 3 hours away, and then myself and Pete and the director had come up with a lot of the ideas for the trailer. We’re working with another writer who was just at my place talking about ideas for the actual series. We’ve got an outline for the pilot, but we’re actually putting the full script together. And then we have a 12-episode outline for the series. So we have another write working with us as well. And then we have a full crew, like camera guys, lighting guys, etc. All of that as well.
Pete: The other thing is this is sort of Brady’s brainchild, and all of us coming together, we’re all pretty passionate about Nightwing, and like I said before, I always wanted to write for Dick Grayson. I went to school for writing and film. I’m also doing a lot of the stunt choreography and the fight scenes, me and Brady are both working on that together as well.
Brady: And I think that this is a project that would never have been able to come together if we didn’t have all these connections in the film industry, especially creating a trailer that looked as professional and expensive as it did. Having those connections and finding equipment was really important, and knowing people who were really good at what they did as well.
AP2HYC: I know you’re trying to raise some money through the IndieGoGo site, how is that going?
Brady: I mean, we’re off to a bit of a slow start on the IndieGoGo site, which is okay, we’ve still got over [30] days left, so we’ll have some time for sure. But yeah, we really need people to start donating, so if you like the trailer, if you wanna see more, if you wanna see that pilot produced, if you could donate, that would be amazing. It starts as low as 10 dollars, and there’s all sorts of different perks, autographs, Skype sessions with members of the cast, on-set visits. We need that cash to produce the pilot, obviously it’s a very expensive thing to do. Without that IndieGoGo campaign being successful, we won’t be able to produce that, so we need the help of the fans.
Pete: And that’s the thing, we have all these connections, we have all the stuff that we need, aside from, realistically, more financial backing. This is something for fans that are watching the trailer or for anyone who’s interested in the project. This is something that is very, very real. Like I said, we have an outline that is essentially 12 episodes, we have the writers, we have producers, we have directors, we have the cameraman, we have it. Essentially, all we need is more financial backing. So if people are interested in this and they want to see this, we really need the help of the fans. Even if you just donate ten bucks or whatever it is on the IndieGoGo site, it’s super important because we want to move forward with this as much as anyone else who comments on it and says “This is awesome, I would love to see more!” This isn’t just some trailer where someone just did a trailer a few years ago and never touched it. We want to be moving forward. And in order to do that, we do need financial backing.
Brady: And I’ve seen a handful of other fan films in the last six months do campaigns like this and get their full funding, and I’m not here to say anything negative about any other fan film or anything like that, but I do believe that ours is a much higher quality and we have a crew of guys that are working currently in the film industry, you know? These aren’t people who are just picking up a video camera and making a home movie, this is professional stuff. We’re shooting on the RED camera, the same camera they used to shoot The Hobbit, the lighting is incredible, the costumes are great, actors from all over, stuff like that. It’s a big professional crew.
AP2HYC: I think that already shows in the trailer, and I know I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the series. So once you do get the funding, when do you think we’ll see the pilot?
Brady: We’d love to shoot over the summer at some point. Some of it depends on scheduling, with Taya’s schedule and myself and Pete’s schedules between filming other stuff. We’d love to shoot in the summer, with the release in the fall.
Pete: Start filming in the summer and not really quit. You can have so many epic shots too, depending on your seasons. I mean you think about classic graphic novels or stories where you have these epic kind of fall-time Gotham cemetery scenes. You have these winter scenes, stuff in the sewer. These are all things that are iconic to me and iconic to the books I think. And I wanna see them brought to life. Once we get rolling on it, it’s not something that we really want to give up on.
If you’d like to donate to help produce Nightwing: Prodigal Son, head over the the Kickstarter site here.