Tom Welling Offers Update on the SMALLVILLE Animated Series - "Lionel Luthor Is Looming Over Everybody"
Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum have been very vocal about bringing Smallville back as an animated series and the fans are excitedly waiting for that to happen. They’ve been talking about this for several years, but unfortunately, they aren’t any closer to making it happen.
Welling recently shared an update on the project at the Terrificon convention in Connecticut this past weekend (via KSiteTV).
Welling told fans: "We've been talking about it for a few years. We want to do a Smallville comic book and animated series, and then we would all voice the characters. We’ve already got an artist, and we have a poster."
He talked about the poster art saying: "We haven’t been able to share it yet, but Lionel Luthor is looming over everybody, and it’s really cool, but we just we we can’t do anything without DC saying we can do it.
“They just haven’t given us a green light, but we’re ready, and Al [Gough] and Miles [Millar], who wrote Smallville, want to write it., but it’s not our property, until they say we can do it."
It sounds like Lionel Luthor is going to play a major role in the story, which is interesting and cool. I’d love to know the direction they are looking to take the story.
The only thing standing in their way is James Gunn and DC Studios signing off on it. Rosenbaum and Gunn are good friends, so you’d think that this project would have a good chance of happening, but maybe not.
Welling later admitted that a Smallville revival is unlikely to be a money-maker for Warner Bros. Discovery, but I think there’s a strong enough fanbase that it would be a success!
He added: "It would be more of a labor of love. It’s not going to make a billion dollars, so the studio is kind of like [grumbles]. Maybe we can do a - not a GoFundMe, because that’s financial - but like a petition. We can petition Warner Bros. to let us do it."
Rosenbaum previously teased the project saying: "Tom and I are working on a Smallville animated series that we're trying to get made. It's gonna take time.”
He continued: "But the creators of Smallville are attached, they want to be a part of it. And we, you know, when it's the right time, we'll pitch it.
“You know, we're working on it and we have some loose animation that we've worked [on] with someone who was just awesome. It looks great. So if we can get that made, that'd be awesome."
Rosenbaum has “a concept of what the show is” and previously said the whole cast of Smallville “would voice their own character from the show.”
The original series starred Rosembaum as Lex Luthor, Welling as Clark Kent, Kristin Kreuk as Lana Lang, Eric Johnson, Sam Jones III, Allison Mack, Annette O’Toole, John Schneider, John Glover, Jensen Ackles, Erica Durance, Justin Hartley, and Callum Blue, among many others.
Welling also briefly talked about some issues he had with his surprise cameo appearance in The CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover.
In that, we learned that Welling's Superman had, for some reason, given up his powers to focus on his wife and family. Fans of Smallville weren't happy and neither was Welling.
The actor said: "I don't know if that's actually the Clark from Smallville because it's a multiverse, so you never know. And I don't know how he lost his powers. No one ever told me."
Do you think DC Studios will eventually greenlight a Smallville animated series?