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2008 Movie News Archives

February 28, 2008: Interview with “New Frontier” Executive Producer Bruce Timm

Interview with Bruce Timm, Executive Producer of Justice League: The New Frontier.

Q: What in your mind made the comic, DC: The New Frontier such that it would become DC's newest direct to DVD animated feature?

Bruce Timm: That's a complicated question and I don't have a simple answer for you. Darwyn [Cooke] and I had been pals for years and I'd seen New Frontier before it was even a comic. Then when the book came out, I was blown away by it. To be honest it wasn't the first thing in my mind that we had to make this into a cartoon. That idea came from Gregory Noveck at DC. He suggested that we do it as one of our DC Universe animated movies. Frankly I was a little bit nervous about it, because as much as I admire the comic, it's sprawlingly huge. It's weird because it's not one story. It's about eighteen different stories looping around each other and it only becomes a Justice League story at the end of the book. So I was scratching my head thinking, how are we going to make this into a 70 minute movie. But you look at the comic and you know that Darwyn has an animation background, partly from working with me, and it's got a very cartoony style, at least that part of it is done. That'll translate to animation relatively easily. Paring the story down was really tricky.

Q: How was the casting process this time around? Did you have anyone already in mind for any particular role?

Timm: We had an idea of the kinds of actors we wanted because it was a period piece. So we wanted actors who A) are terrific actors and B) didn't sound too contemporary. We wanted actors who could sound like they were coming from what we think of as the 1950s. At the same time, we didn't want people who sounded corny or old fashioned. We wanted them fresh for a modern audience, but we didn't want them to sound like 21st century people. So that was tricky. At the same time, the home video people wanted us to get more popular, marquee-value names. So we would brainstorm different actors for each part and the home video people had some ideas of their own, like really big name actors. We just knew realistically that we didn't have the money to get those kinds of people. Ultimately I'm thrilled we got the cast that we got. I think they were all great and they did exactly what I wanted them to do which is they sound right for the part, and they sound right for the period, but they don't sound corny or old fashioned. I think they were awesome.

Q: Was it harder or easier to design the characters in this film, since they appear so similar to the finished movie animation?

Timm: The big ace up my sleeve on that is that Darwyn himself ended up designing all the main characters for the movie. He wasn't going to because he was busy doing The Spirit comic and at one point he was really uncomfortable about the idea of turning New Frontier into an animated movie because he wanted it to be great, but then there were some issues like having to lose certain elements of the comic. He was going back and forth. One day he was into it, then another he just didn't want anything to do with it. Ultimately he was happy with the script. He even went and did the final polish to the script himself and at that point he was very comfortable with it.

NOTE: Order "Justice League: The New Frontier" now in either a 2-disc special edition DVD, a single-disc DVD, Blu-ray disc, or soon on HD DVD.