iF: Its pretty rare to have a feature film [SUPERMAN RETURNS], while youre still on TV. When you first started the show, you told me D.C. was nervous about you and Miles dipping into the comic book well too much because of the revisionist SUPERMAN movie in development. Did they get concerned when SUPERMAN RETURNS was finally greenlit since it is more in line with the original films, much like SMALLVILLE is?
GOUGH: The great thing ultimately, was our biggest savior was Bryan Singer. Bryan was a fan of the show. We had a gentlemans agreement. Miles, myself, Bryan, [SUPERMAN RETURNS scribes] Dan [Harris] and Mike [Dougherty] the writers, we would keep each other in the loop. Bryan invited us down to Australia. We sort of pitched out Season Five. Bryan offered to let us read the script and we said well, quite frankly we dont want that responsibility. But you tell us if any of this is conflicting or things that are not going to jive and things you want us to stay away from. For a television show, you have that flexibility. And it was a great working relationship. Before that, when it was the McG version of the movie and it was another origin story and Krypton didnt blow up, and Lex Luthor was a Kryptonian -- there was a year there where it was very tough, in that weird kind of way. We were in the weird position of arguing 60 years of comics history to them, where they were willing to have a planet where Superman is on Earth but Krypton still existed. It was bizarre. Thankfully Bryan came in and said, I dont want to do SMALLVILLE, I want to do a SUPERMAN movie, and he did SUPERMAN RETURNS.
source: iF Magazine
