by ED FORTUNE
Jase Ricci is a writer and producer best known for Tangled: The Series (2017) and 2012’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He’s also the creative force behind Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham, the latest feature from DC Animation. We recently spoke with him to find out more…
STARBURST: How would you pitch this movie to someone who doesn’t know either Batman or H.P. Lovecraft?
Jase Ricci: It’s funny because I think one of the benefits of the Elseworlds projects is that they are very niche. This is a mix of Batman and Lovecraft. And if you don’t know Batman or Lovecraft, you probably want to figure out Batman and Lovecraft first! Not that it’s not accessible to general audiences, but I do feel like it is a little more niche, and it doesn’t have the same effect If you’re not familiar with how a Lovecraft story goes to the world or how a Batman story goes. I think if you’re looking for a Batman story and you’re not familiar with Lovecraft, you’re still going to enjoy it, but you’ll enjoy it more if you have that niche appetite.
When writing an Elseworlds story like this, how do you keep it ‘Batman’?
Well, fortunately, we had a really strong creative team element that kept us in check. And being a lifelong fan of Batman, I feel pretty confident that I know the characters. There’s a beauty to something like Batman. Is Adam West Batman? Yes. Michael Keaton? Yes. Is Christian Bale? Yes. Is Kevin Conroy? Yes. Every version of Batman is Batman. He’s one of the most identifiable characters in the world, so he’s so malleable in many ways. There are so many different versions of Batman that when you’re working on an Elseworlds project like this, you have that latitude in the room to sort of push Batman to a place he has not been before. As long as you have those touchstone elements and that familiarity.
Jase Ricci
In H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, the characters always end up crazy. How do you do that here? Batman’s already crazy!
Good question. Denial. You’re right because I think the point of this story is that he’s still the hero. He has this almost otherworldly bat vision at the very start of his journey to becoming Batman. But he blocks it out of his mind. He embraces logic in order to hide from it. And it’s not until he lets go of that semblance of sanity – that says through logic and reason believe in the rationale – that he lets himself fall into the insanity. It’s not about him going crazy, it’s about him realising he’s crazy! It’s a really cool twist on your expectations of a Lovecraftian story.
Is kid-friendly horror a thing you like to do?
Yeah, I really hit my groove with a bunch of projects that are marrying my love of sci-fi, horror, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And, you know, one of the greatest things ever was we had Jeffrey Combs in this project as Kirk Langstrom. He’s been a hero of mine forever. He was actually the Rat King in an episode that I wrote for Ninja Turtles. And whenever I can, I look for projects with horror elements, or there are episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where I can fit in a horror element -werewolves and ghosts and stuff like that. I think it’s fun to cross genres!
BATMAN: THE DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM is out from March 27th on Blu-ray and digital.
