I leaned over the table, tapping the concept art again. "Yeah, I like this better," I said. The concept art of Hal Jordan's suit on Chris Pine stared back at me: one looked like the suit from the disastrous Ryan Reynolds movie from my old world; the other had no glowing veins of energy, no plastic sheen just a practical, grounded design, a deep emerald fabric that still looked otherworldly but real.
Seated with me was the writing team for the Green Lanterns movie: Jon Spaihts, Geoff Johns, and Tom King. Geoff and Tom were more consultants, but they'd become co-writers as they worked together on the script, and next to me was the director of the movie, Joseph Kosinski.
Jon Spaihts nodded in agreement. "I agree with Daniel that one looks way better."
Across the table, Geoff Johns and Tom King sat with crossed arms, listening closely. They were DC veterans, and I was the young guy they were working under. There'd been friction of course there had. Writers as passionate as these two don't walk into a room without their own visions but there were no major issues. They'd kept the collaboration smooth and, in the end, we'd crafted a script that worked: a story about mentors and students, about legacy and betrayal, Hal Jordan training John Stewart, and the two of them facing off against Sinestro, Hal's own teacher who had betrayed him and the Corps.
"I still think a glow works better. It makes it stand out. You lose that if the suits are too plain," Joseph Kosinski said.
I exhaled, raising a brow. "It's going to look terrible if the whole thing glows very cartoony. No one will take it seriously. The constructs, Joseph, should stand out so they can be the 'glowy' effect, as you put it."
Geoff broke the silence. "Maybe there's a middle ground. A subtle shimmer just enough to hint at the ring's energy."
Tom chimed in, grinning. "Yeah, a little effect. Nothing that makes him look like a Christmas ornament."
I pointed at them. "Let's wait for the first renders, then I'll make the final decision."
They all nodded.
Damson Idris was in the other room being fitted into the practical suit, which would be used for the shoot. A practical suit with some final post-CGI enhancements…not a fully CGI suit that was what I wanted for the movie.
I looked at the concept art once more. Hal's suit was his classic one from the comics: a green torso framed in black, white cutting across the arms, and the Lantern symbol sharp at the center on a white background.
John Stewart's design was the one I remembered so vividly from the Justice League animated show shoulders, half the torso, and parts of the legs in emerald, the rest dipped in black. Fitting of his character.The movie was going into principal photography in two months; it would be shot in Atlanta and England. The Batman pt.3 was also set to begin production in three months, in England as well.
Damn I cant believe we managed to finish the script in time as well as do pre production at the same time. I remembered how the writing team at DC Nolan and I made a great script with so much less time of course it helped that I used most of the story from one from my previous life.
Maybe I should have both casts meet during filming in England…it could be fun.
Joseph Kosinski tapped the table, pulling me out of my thoughts. "Let's go check out Damson in the new suit. They should be done by now."
I chuckled. "It better look good. Last time we put Pine and Damson in costume, it looked like a bad cosplay."
That earned a round of laughter, the tension breaking as we all stood and filed out.
We walked down the hall to where Damson was being fitted. Tom was asking what Scott and I were cooking up for Justice League and offered to help now that he was free. As we neared, I spotted John standing by the wardrobe room. John and I were supposed to grab lunch in an hour with Ari Calder, the head of DC Games, to discuss an inter-studio partnership between DC and Arcaenum.
"They're almost done with Damson," John said as we approached. "It looks great, man."
"I hope so," I said, pushing the door open as we all went in.
And there he was.
Damson Idris with the emerald-and-black suit wrapped around him perfectly. The costume team had done a great job; considering the money they'd spent, yeah, I understood how they'd pulled this off.
For a moment, no one said anything.
"See?" I finally broke the silence, grinning at Joseph. "I don't think we even need CGI."
Joseph tilted his head, studying the way the light played against the fabric. Slowly, he nodded. "Okay… okay, I'm starting to see it. I'll admit, I was put off by the last few iterations. But this…" He trailed off, still staring.
Damson spread his arms wide, looking at himself in the mirror. "This is the one, Mr Adler, this is the one."
John whistled low. "It looks good. Damn good."
I clapped my hands together. "Well, gentlemen, I think that settles it. Forget waiting for the renders we're locking in this one."
Agreement rippled around the room; even Joseph nodded in acceptance.
I looked at Damson one more time. "After we do a fitting with Chris tomorrow, I'd say we can call this the end of a very successful pre-production."
========
After another round of back-and-forth about the third act of Green Lanterns with Joseph Kosinski standing his ground against John Spaihts while Geoff Johns and Tom King split the difference I managed to calm things down. We agreed to settle the matter tomorrow and went our separate ways.
John and I stepped out of DC HQ into the hot L.A. sun. It had been a busy three days for me…So busy I hadn't been home at all. My schedule was brutal: there was a big issue with John Wick 2's post-production, bad enough that we were considering delaying it by a month to March from the February 2016 release date. I didn't want that to happen; March was stacked and we'd lose money. And the next wave of projects was lining up like dominoes.
Birdman.
Lady Bird.
Misery.
The John Wick spinoff.
Two movies promised for Netflix.
And, looming above everything else, Dune.
Some, like Paul, wanted to hit the gas immediately and focus on Herbert's masterpiece, but my gut said to wait until later, when Midas could afford to give it full attention. Denis Villeneuve was the natural choice to direct. I was friendly with him, and he'd done a great job with it in my previous life. But a part of me wanted to direct it myself. I lacked the confidence to do it now, though, and I wanted The Usual Suspects to be the test. If I couldn't pull off that film, I had no business touching Dune or any movie at all.
Of course there was the looming issue with Cassie…
I started getting a headache thinking about that.
"—Oh great, is that…?" John's voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
I followed his gaze to a man loitering across the street, camera hanging at the ready.
"What's up? Just some paparazzi," I said, unlocking the car.
John ducked into the passenger seat, grimacing. "Yeah, well, last time one of them hounded me nonstop, asking about Joanna."
I slid behind the wheel and turned to him. "Joanna? What about Joanna?"
"You know the whole thing with Justin Bieber?" said John.
"Ohhh," I said, starting the car and easing it out of the lot.
Joanna had been in Italy on vacation, and last week a photo surfaced of her with Bieber. That was all it took for the tabloids to drag her into his ongoing romance circus with Hailey Baldwin. Overnight, the headlines were full of "Bieber love affair with Joanna."
I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought.
"Don't laugh, Danny. This is serious," John snapped, frowning.
"It's not," I said. "Didn't she just bump into him?"
"Yes," John said, frustrated. "But not according to those parasites. One of them even tried to mess with my mom, asking her about…" He trailed off, jaw tightening.
"You need help? I can—"
He shook his head. "No, no. Jo has it handled."
I kept my eyes on the road and shrugged. "Since Jo keeps her love life private, they just latched onto this. It's an easy story."
He gave a short nod. He knew I was right.
Joanna had dated a guy a couple of years ago, and when that ended badly, she swore off relationships for a while. Since then, she was all about having fun, just short flings, nothing serious. She was signed to the same PR firm as me, which helped keep her personal life airtight. Until now, thanks to an unfortunate chance meeting with Justin Bieber.
"Don't think too much about it," I said. "It'll blow over soon. Bieber's always in a new scandal these days. People forget."
"Yeah," John sighed. "I hope so."
"So," I asked, changing the subject, "about the Game of Thrones project we should start it by the end of the year."
The game was something John and I had first talked about making back when Dark Souls I was still in development. This year, we finally sat down and mapped out how we were actually going to make it, with a clear vision to release by 2020. By then, I was certain the Game of Thrones TV series would be dominating the cultural zeitgeist, and a game tied to that world would be irresistible to players—even casual ones.
What I envisioned for the game was a mix of several titles: the immersion and survival realism of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the combat and stamina-based systems of Dark Souls, and perhaps most ambitious of all the Nemesis System, which we'd just acquired from Monolith, where enemies remembered you after a conflict, rivalries grew naturally, and a living world shifted around your choices.
The setting we picked was the Riverlands, about a thousand years before Aegon's Conquest a time of endless wars, chaos, and ambition. The perfect stage for a player character to rise from nothing.
You wouldn't be "the chosen one." Like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you'd start as a nobody, scraping and bleeding your way through a brutal world. And because the Riverlands were so full of upheaval at the time, I wrote lore in which even peasants could rise to kingship, and many petty kingdoms existed.
With the Nemesis System layered in, every playthrough would feel different. Enemies could become bitter rivals or fleeting allies shaping the story as much as the player did.
In the early game, you're a nobody, a peasant, outlaw, or bastard scraping to survive in the chaos of the Riverlands. The enemies you face are raiders, local thugs, and outlaws just like you.
Imagine if you will… you fight an outlaw captain and defeat him. He flees, scarred and humiliated. That humiliation festers. Soon, he plans revenge: he might ambush you on the road or spread rumors in villages, reducing your reputation. A personal vendetta is born, and suddenly the world feels alive and changing.
But if you kill him, that's the end of his story. Another rival will take his place, shaped by the path you're walking. As you rise to become a squire, a sworn sword, or a mercenary captain, new enemies appear on that higher stage: ambitious squires from rival lords, hedge knights who despise you, sellsword captains jealous of your fame.
That one squire you treated badly? Maybe he rises as a knight or castellan by the late game, standing in your way at the worst possible moment. Or maybe you befriended him and that bond makes the endgame easier.
And as you climb higher still to a knight of renown, outlaw leader, or even minor lord the Nemesis System raises the stakes again. Your rivals are now lords and their bannermen men with keeps and armies who can drag entire houses into your feud.
It was a very ambitious game—so ambitious that John and I sometimes thought it was too much—but, damn, I really wanted to play it. I didn't care about the money; I just wanted to somehow make it happen.
John didn't answer my question the first time, so I asked again. "Did you hear me?"
He sighed, leaning back in his seat. "Yeah, I did. Look, Danny, like we talked about before, this might be too much."
"I mean, there's no rush."
John gave me a look. "Yes, I guess I do have a very generous boss," he said with a smile.
"That you do," I said with a grin. "Put the new Monolith guys to work on it. They know the Nemesis System better than anyone. We can focus completely on the Thrones project after Dark Souls 3."
He nodded, considering it. "I think it'd be better if we tested the system on something else first." He paused. "Half of me wants to try it on Dark Souls 3."
I waved a hand. "Meh. That wouldn't work. I do have another idea, though."
John raised a brow. "So what then?"
"Well, why do you think we're going to meet Calder? Why do you think he asked us to meet? He knows what we have he wants it. So I say we agree and let DC Games use it for their Batman game, unless you have a problem with it."
"Yeah," John said, and now he was smiling. "I don't mind at all. A Batman game with the Nemesis System would be fucking awesome."
I nodded and pictured that game in my mind. Gotham City had a lot of crime muggings, carjackings, murders, robberies, serial killers, thieves. Now tie the Nemesis System into that. If the criminals get away if Batman fails to stop a crime they don't just vanish. They keep committing crimes. They get noticed by gangs and villains, even recruited. They get equipment upgrades, climb the ladder, and start leading their own squads. And it doesn't stop there. Eventually they adopt full-blown criminal personas and allegiances, depending on which villain backs them Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, whoever. If Batman stops them? Fine. But if they were high-level, villains can break them out. Suddenly you're hunting the same guy three or four times, each encounter bigger than the last.
"Damn, I want to play it now," I said, running the Batman/Nemesis idea in my head.
John grinned. "We need a time machine or something."
We both laughed as I pulled the car into the restaurant lot. Parking neatly, I killed the engine, and we stepped out into the hot afternoon air.
"I don't have any involvement in the games division other than… you know, helping get it started and giving them the damn idea for the game," I said with a bit of frustration in my voice as we walked away from the car, remembering the internal studio politics that kept me away from doing much in DC's games division.
"As long as they give us some data, I don't mind if they use it. Could make it easier for us," John said.
I nodded, pushing open the door. The hostess recognized us immediately and led us to a booth in the corner. We slid in, waiting for Ari Calder to arrive.
John and I talked about the whole drama with Joanna and Justin again, and I was about to call her when I got a text from Carver.
It said…
Loan approved.
A wide grin spread across my face.
"Hey," I said, looking at John, "my 800 million dollar loan just got approved."
John was mid-sip of water. He choked, sputtered, then coughed, staring at me with wide eyes.
"Danny what the fuck!?"
I burst out laughing at his reaction.
Eight hundred million dollars in cold, hard cash now I get to spend it.
Wonder how Henry is going to react when I buy out Games Workshop…Might as well give him a job there after I buy it.