Al Gough was recently interviewed by Wizard and had some interesting things to say about Aquaman:
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/000852768.cfm
‘AQUAMAN’ TO RESURFACE?
Co-creator Al Gough says pilot is not sleeping with the fishes
By Ben Morse and Mel Caylo
Posted July 10, 2006 9:30 AM
Even though it wasn’t picked up for the fall 2006 TV season, will fans get to see the “Aquaman” TV pilot? Co-creator Al Gough hopes so. He says plans are in the works to get it out there so that fans can see it.
Recognizing Gough and partner Miles Millar’s success on “Smallville,” The WB greenlit their proposal late last year to do for Aquaman what they did for Superman. The producers then set out to create a pilot that would turn the Aquaman mythos on its ear but still make it accessible for a wide audience. Actors like Lou Diamond Phillips and Ving Rhames were cast, and news leaked the show was going to be set in Florida starring a character nicknamed “A.C.” short for Aquaman’s real name, Arthur Curry.
But then on Jan, 24, 2006, the news hit that The WB and UPN were merging to form one network called The CW, combining their most popular returning shows, but leaving few slots open for new ones. The trade newspapers reported only two pilots were in contention on The WB’s side, one of which was “Aquaman,” and it supposedly was the frontrunner. But when the fall schedules were announced in May, “Aquaman” was nowhere on The CW’s docket.
When pilots are not picked up, they go TV heaven, never to be seen again. Actors are not credited for having worked on it, and the public never gets to see them. But Gough and Millar feel so passionately about the “Aquaman” pilot they are working on a way to get fans to see it. Here’s what Gough had to say when Wizard Universe caught up with him:
WIZARD: DC President Paul Levitz said this of the “Aquaman” series once The CW passed on it: “We either need to find a new home for it or start all over.” What’s the update now that the pilot exists?
AL GOUGH: We’re working on a way to get the pilot out there. That’s sort of all I can say at the moment. Whether it’s some sort of addition on season six of “Smallville” or not—we’re really proud of the pilot. We’d love for the fans to get a chance to see it. The implication when a network doesn’t pick up a show is that the pilot sucks and that’s not the case. It’s not a perfect pilot by any stretch of the imagination. There are other reasons—which are a mystery to us—as to why The CW didn’t pick it up. I think it definitely puts Aquaman in a modern context and he’s not lame. It’s a shame because it would have been a really fun series.
Even when The WB and UPN merged to form The CW, industry insiders said “Aquaman” was safe and was still one of the frontrunners to get picked up for the fall 2006 season. But shockingly, that didn’t happen. What was your reaction when you found out the network had passed on “Aquaman”?
GOUGH: There are three emotions in show business: depression, surprise and relief. We were certainly surprised and depressed, but ultimately relieved, because it’s such a big undertaking that would have required so much time that if you’re not with a network that is going to support you 150%, you’re just better off not doing it.
“Smallville” was so hard to get off the ground, but The WB was always 150% behind the show. They always believed in it and at the start of the series really treated us with kid gloves and gave us time to figure out the show and how to produce it, which is a whole other issue. Guess what? It paid off. But they always believed in the show.
So in a way, we were ultimately relieved not to have [The CW] pick us up and not believe in it, to not just go, “Well, we’ll pick you up and try it” because I feel this just requires too much blood, sweat and tears for anybody to go through that. If you don’t believe you’ve got 100 episodes of the show—which we as creators certainly believed we did, and as you can see from our work on “Smallville” and from the pilot, there were a lot of places to go—it’s a shame, but guess what, that’s television, it’s never a sure thing.
By the way, if there were still a WB, we’d be on The WB, without a doubt. If we had known in November that The CW was forming, we would have never done it. These people don’t know us—why put yourself out there like that the first year of a new network? We would have said, “Let’s see what this network does and see what they’re really interested in” and just waited. Again, you put so much time and effort into the pilot—five weeks away from your family. But we at least want to get the pilot out there to the fans, that would be great, so people don’t go, “Oh, well they didn’t pick it up, it must have sucked.” The plan is to get it out there somehow and there will actually be an announcement about that in the next few weeks.
In a few weeks is San Diego Comic-Con, and that may be where they choose to make an announcement about the fate of the pilot. We’ll keep you posted!