On The Dark Knight: “I’ll tell you the thing about Batman, and I mean this sincerely, the main reason why I’m not going to say anything is because Chris doesn’t want me to say anything.”
Has his relationship with Chris Nolan changed from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight? “Well, the relationship was the same as the first one,” answered Goyer. “We have a - it’s just a great sense of mutual respect. We argue ferociously about things and it’s knock-down drag-out fights about things, but it’s good. We sit there when we’re working in his office, or wherever we are, and we just go back and forth and challenge each other and the best idea wins.”
On Green Arrow – Now Called Super Max: “It's being written. I wish I had a more interesting answer than that. Just the writers started working like a week ago.
On The Flash: “Look, The Flash was just one of those… It's so funny because it ended up happening the same day as Joss Whedon on Wonder Woman. We ended up a week later, two weeks later, having lunch together, Joss and I. But fortunately I'm in a place in my career where I can pick and choose what I want to do. I reached a point… You know, when you start out, you just want to get a job or you just want to get your movie made or things like that. I reached a point, I don't know how many years ago, where if I got a set of notes that I really didn't believe in, I wouldn't do. So then either I walk or I don't walk, or something like that. The Flash, I still have a great relationship with Warner Brothers. I turned around a month later and sold them Super Max. It just became apparent that we wanted to do two different stories.”
On His Next Project: Goyer says he’ll be directing something in the fall but wouldn’t reveal what it will be because he’s still deciding what to tackle next. “There’s a couple of balls in the air right now that will land in the next month or so. Right now I’m writing a remake of Scanners. I’m not directing that, for Dimension. And I’m fortunately for me, but unfortunately for you, I’m working on a couple of secret projects that I can’t talk about.”
On Remaking Scanners: “[David] Cronenberg is absolutely one of my favorite filmmakers. I love the original.” That means Goyer will be extra careful with the remake. “Interestingly enough with Scanners, Scanners is a great movie but it's also very dated to a certain extent,” explained Goyer. “Largely in sociopolitical terms it's very dated. Cronenberg's movies are always very political and very specific. That original film had a lot to do with corporate America and the Reagan years and all of that stuff, and that's not what's happening now. So my whole thing was, and I love that movie and I don't want to ruin that movie, so it's not a slavish remake. It's kind of taking the best stuff from that and trying to apply the same sociopolitical template. What I mean by that is you take the existence of scanners and pick up the newspaper right now and read about all the stuff that's going on in Iraq, or the stuff that's going on in the Justice Department or Guantanamo Bay and all the rights that are being trampled on. That's what I'm trying to deal with in the remake of that.”
Goyer hasn’t spoken to Cronenberg about the remake. “I haven't yet. I figured the best way to do it would be finish it and send it to him and either get his blessing or take my lashings.”
On the film’s potential rating, Goyer said, “The cool thing about Scanners is Bob Weinstein said, ‘Don’t hold back. It’s hard R.’ So with Scanners, it's just fun to know I can just go for it and I don't have to do the toned down version of it.” Asked if he’ll be blowing up a head, Goyer replied, “Of course we're going to blow up a head, but we have to go further than blow up a head because we're 20 years down the line.”
On His Version of Ghost Rider: “Well, my version, which Stephen Norrington was going to direct, was a completely different movie. And Nic Cage was attached to both. Our version was The Haunted Mansion and Mark Steven Johnson’s is Pirates of the Caribbean. Ours was a super hard R and it was a horror film, just an outright horror film. It was harder than Blade. It was really hard. So that would have been really fun. Would that have been as successful at the box office? Probably not.”
On Other Superhero Characters: Who would he still like to take a crack at bringing to the big screen? “I could say something because it’s a wannabe. I would love to one day do an R-rated Dr. Strange, but who knows,” answered Goyer. “Most of the ones that I’ve worked on, most of the ones I’ve done, I had an opportunity already to work on quite a few. I’m pretty sated in that regard.”
On Blade the TV Series: “Blade is unfortunately not still on. It will come out on DVD. My TV experience has been somewhat frustrating because usually to the extent that I’ve done TV, it’s kind of too edgy for TV or doesn’t fit in the typical television box. But I’ll keep trying. I had a good experience, even though it was short-lived, [on] the pilot of Threshold. I was really proud of that. For some reason, people don’t know that I directed that but I did. That was really fun. It’s fun working in television because the pace is so different than features. I liken it to the difference between oil painting and watercolor. You’ve got to move so quickly in television, but I think that’s fun.”
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