Appearing at the panel for Blue Ribbon Content during the ongoing Television Critics Association press tour, CW Seed executive VP Peter Girardi spoke about the digital series production arm of Warner Bros. Television Group and its three animated digital series Vixen, Freedom Fighters: The Ray and Constantine.
The latter two follow on from the live-action incarnations of the character on The CW’s shows where they were played by Russell Tovey and Matt Ryan respectively. Asked by Collider about the strategy for the characters and whether the animated shows will be separate from the Arrowverse, Girardi says:
“That’s yet to be determined. The first one we did was Vixen. And Vixen started out as animated. And I think we were also happy when it did migrate into the Arrowverse, but it started out as animated first. Since then, we’ve figured out a little more of a strategy around it where we worked very closely with Greg [Berlanti] and Marc Guggenheim and the team there to figure out what characters are going to work, what’s in [their] future plans, what can we do.
Also, with animation, the first thing you ask is, Why does this need to be animated? So we try to up the scale, and the consequences, and the VFX, and the set pieces in animation because, as we call it in the world of animation, pencil power. Just pencil power, it’s people drawing.
Moving forward, Constantine was a great example as well because the Constantine that we’re doing … it’s Constantine, if you’re familiar with the character. It’s Constantine from the Vertigo comic; it’s dark. Darker than the show.”
Constantine is expected to air in early 2018. Freedom Fighters: The Ray went up last month.
