Seth Rogen is always looking for a good indie comic to adapt for the screen, but he has a reason for avoiding Marvel and DC comics.
During a recent interview with Polygon, the actor-writer-producer, who is currently preparing for the release of his latest animated movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem on Aug. 2, revealed why “fear” has turned him off from teaming up with these other major movie franchises.
“We really have a pretty specific way we work; me and Evan [Goldberg] have been writers for 20 years at this point,” he explained. “It’s a fear of the process, honestly. And I say that knowing nothing about the process. There are a lot of Marvel things I love.”
Rogen continued, “It’s mostly a fear of how would we plug into the system they have in place, which seems like a very good system, and a system that serves them very well. But is it a system that we would ultimately get really frustrated with?”
The Platonic star emphasized that he and his writing partner prefer to feel like they have control and creative freedom with the projects they take on.
“What’s nice about [Mutant Mayhem] is that we’re the producers of this,” he added. “So we dictated the system, and we dictated the process in a lot of ways. And that’s what’s also appealing for us about The Boys and the other bigger franchise-y type things we’ve done, is that we are creating the infrastructure and process for them, not plugging into someone else’s infrastructure and process. We’re control freaks!”
Earlier this year, Rogen told Total Film magazine that he does credit the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s content for making The Boys, based on a comic book series, possible, saying it “wouldn’t exist or be interesting” without the studio. “I think that Kevin Feige is a brilliant guy, and I think a lot of the filmmakers he’s hired to make these movies are great filmmakers,” he said at the time. “But as someone who doesn’t have children … It is [all] kind of geared towards kids, you know? There are times where I will forget. I’ll watch one of these things, as an adult with no kids, and be like, ‘Oh, this is just not for me.’”
When it comes to finding comics that do pique his interest, Rogen told Polygon that he first, looks for anything that’s not Marvel or DC which “eliminates a lot right away,” and then seeks comics that have room for expansion.
“I would go to the comic book shop [when I was younger] and I would just walk around. And you see this comic book and it catches your eye, and you see that comic book and it catches your eye,” he said. “Those have been the things that have really inspired us and made us want to work on these things for a long time — coupled with the inclination that you have something to add to it. There are a lot of comic books I love and things I love, but I’m like, What would I add?“
