James Gunn's CREATURE COMMANDOS DC Animated Series Is Too Big for Live-Action
There’s a lot of interesting and cool information that came from James Gunn and Peter Safran’s big DC Studios announcement event. One of the many projects announced that I don’t see a lot of people talking about is the animated series that Gunn has already written titled Creature Commandos.
This is actually a pretty exciting project, especially for fans of animation. Creature Commandos is the only animated project that was announced for the DCU's Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters lineup. This band of misfit characters were introduced in Weird War Tales #93 (November 1980), created by J. M. DeMatteis and Pat Broderick.
The story for the project is so big that the only way it could be told is through animation because it would be way too expensive to pull off for live-action.
When talking about the project Safran said: “Animation will lead into live action and back into animation. It’s a way to tell stories that are gigantic and huge without spending $50M an episode.” He went on to say, “Sometimes it's a fun way to introduce characters or introduce stories that would frankly be too expensive to be done in live-action.”
Creature Commandos is comprised of military superhumans including a human leader, a werewolf, a vampire, Frankenstein’s monster, and a gorgon. Gunn pointed out that Weasel from his movie Suicide Squad will be on the show.
Gunn went on to explain: "Creature Commandos is based on the great team from DC. What we're doing with the DCU is, we are having animation tied directly into live action. Television, movies, and games all intertwine within the same universe. We're going to cast actors that are going to be able to play the characters in this as well as in other things, some of which we've already cast. I've written all seven episodes of the show, and it's in production. So that's the first thing, and I love it."
The story will be told over the course of seven episodes, so had that been a live-action series it could have cost DC Studios around $245 million to $280 million to produce.
I’m excited to see how this show turns out!