SDCC 2007: Teen Titans Movie News

From IGN.com: Screenwriter Mark Verheiden was at Comic-Con today to talk about his various impending projects, and of course the topic of the recently announced Teen TitansBatman Begins and the Watchmen comic book.

"It's not light and frothy," he says. "It's not silly. I want to play the characters so they feel real to us, not like people we can't understand. And I think Nightwing is a great character for that."

Nightwing is the adult persona of Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Batman's sidekick Robin, who leads the group and is the sole confirmed character in the film so far. Verheiden isn't talking yet about who else will make the film's roster, though he does confirm that there will be multiple villains in the film - and, as he told IGN exclusively after the panel had ended today, from a personal standpoint he is fond of the Marv Wolfman-George Pérez era of the comic book.

"I love the Perez-Wolfman stuff, so we're definitely looking at that, but I don't really want to get into who the team we're picking is yet," he says. "But I'm a huge fan of Marv Wolfman's work and I've talked to him about this a little bit. We're friends and if I can be true to his feeling that you get from those books, I'd be very happy."

Verheiden adds that the real challenge of the film will be to keep the characters "real," which is something he thinks Batman Begins pulled off quite well.

"I think the challenge is probably in terms of the team, to make sure that each one of them gets their due," he says. "The real challenge in this to me is to make sure that you feel you really know these characters as real people. They're empowered people that have been blessed with abilities that are beyond imagination, except for Robin who worked on it and became that himself. And yet they have the same wants, hopes, dreams, and emotions as everyone else. It's just they have this extra part of their lives. And I thought what was interesting too, the sort of big difference between the Teen Titans and some of the other big stories, like say the X-Men, is the Titans have had their powers and for the most part have lived with them all their lives. So this isn't a learning curve. This isn't, 'Oh my God, I can suddenly spout fire!' This isn't the Fantastic Four either. It's a story about, 'What do you do when you've had these powers and now you're 18?' And your name was 'This Lad' or 'Kid This' and now all of a sudden it's, 'How do I have my own identity?' So the core of it is really about the emotional story of these guys, and of course it's a huge, fun action movie too. But the core of it is going to be to try to understand these characters and sort of what it is to be them in today's world."

And while Batman Begins will serve as a basis for how the characters in Teen Titans should be portrayed, Verheiden doesn't see any great need to mix his universe with the worlds of that film or the other current DC movies like Superman Returns.

"In terms of the universes of those films, I don't think we want to do anything to violate the continuity that they've established," he says. "I want to be very true to the Teen Titans, however, I don't want to be slavish to the point where we're just doing things to… I want to be as true as possible, but do the best story I can is I guess the way to put it. In terms of Batman Begins, that's just a great touch point in terms of tone. It's serious without being [too serious]. You feel like there's real jeopardy for those characters. And that's what we want for Teen Titans. When they're in trouble, we don't want you to think they're just going to pull the magic power out of their hat. They're in genuine trouble, genuine jeopardy, and these are 18-year-old young adults trying to figure out, 'How do we survive, how do we stay proud in front of our friends, how do we just be true to sort of what we think we are at a moment of conflict in [ourselves]?' Because they're going through the classic, 'I'm 18 and I don't know what the hell I'm doing.'"

As for whether or not the film will be based on any specific Teen Titan storylines or comics, Verheiden sees the project as more being inspired by thematic arcs of the Titans saga.

"It's sort of taking from the universe and then creating an amalgam that works for us," he says. "If you've loved the books, I don't think you're going to go, 'What the heck is going on with the Teen Titans?' We're not reinventing the wheel is what I want to say. We want to stay true because it's a great franchise, fantastic characters. I love Teen Titans and I'm old enough to have bought them when they were coming out. The Marv Wolfman version -- not the really early version! I want to do a show that appeals to fans who really love these characters and also isn't so sort of oblique or inside that people on the outside can't really get it."