Berlanti explains how they convinced DC to let the Arrowverse do Crisis on Infinite Earths

It’s been five years since the Arrowverse planted the seeds of a looming Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the Flash pilot episode, and this fall they’re finally paying it off. So, how’d they convince Warner Bros. and DC to let them tackle one of the most iconic comic events ever conceived? 

Producer Greg Berlanti opened up to Entertainment Weekly about the development process, and said they were able to make the case to the Powers That Be that the Arrowverse version of this story would be unique to anything the film side might ever want to do on the big screen — to the point they can safely live in their separate corners of the limitless multiverse.

“We weren’t sure we’d ever be allowed to [do our version of Crisis], or where we’d get to that place,” told EW. “It’s our iteration of it. It’s not necessarily what they’d end up doing in the film space, so we could advocate for it that way, in terms of permission… Whenever we do an iconic story line or we do something that reminds us really vividly of one of those books that meant a lot to us, we have a sense of pressure and obligation of ‘Oh wow, we really don’t want to mess this up’ even more so than we usually do. So that fear overrides any kind of other emotion.”

The comic event served a few different purposes for DC when it original ran back in the mid-1980s, connecting disparate stories and making a wide swing to clean up some overly complicated continuity with a multiverse-busting threat. The Arrowverse version looks to follow the broad strokes, but this take on the DC universe has always diverged from the comics, and it stands to reason this event will do much the same to make it work within the continuity that’s been established (and the characters actually available to The CW).

The Arrowverse’s spin on Crisis is set to air across five hours this fall, encompassing characters from Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, Batwoman and Legends of Tomorrow. Most of the Arrowverse returns to the schedule in October, with Legends set to premiere at midseason.

What do you think? Can they actually pull it off?

(Via Entertainment Weekly)