Set Visit Report: Producer Charles Roven On ‘Wonder Woman 1984’
Set visits don’t always go as planned. Things start and stop because, well, a movie is being filmed. In London, Wonder Woman 1984 proved that point with Charles “Chuck” Roven, the super producer whose credits also include The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad and more. While in London, a handful of journalists, including BlackFilmandTV.com, started chatting with him as scenes with Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) and Chris Pine (Steve Trevor) at the Pentagon were being prepped and filmed. Something called him away, but he was able to come back later. So his interview is in two parts—one part just before we spoke to Gal Gadot and Chris Pine and the other just before we spoke to Patti Jenkins.
[The set] seems very bright.
Charles Roven: It’s more colorful for sure because the period is more colorful. I think a lot of what you’re feeling in terms of tone is really driven by the period. I think in terms of the blend of drama, comedy, action, adventure, I think you find it will be pretty similar in terms of having all those colors.
In the original Wonder Woman film, Diana had to deal with a lot of inequality and hate like the one scene when she had to leave the room because they didn’t want her in the room while they discussed business. What type of those issues that women had to overcome in the eighties are in this film?
Charles Roven: I think that this film deals more with what I think would be universal issues as opposed to gender issues. As I think you all know, in terms of the period of the mid-80s, 1984, it was a period of time where the United States, the world, seemed to have it all. So it was a period of great innovation. It was also a period of great greed, great ambition and there was a yin and a yang to all of that.
Can you tease Steve and Diana’s dynamic this go around?
Charles Roven: Obviously we can’t tell you how it is that he’s here or in that period or in the film. I think that a lot of it is just a continuation but that where Steve was sort of more of the person who was helping Diana understand the world that she was coming into, when she was coming into what we were calling a “man’s world, I think now that Diana has been around from 1918 until the 80s, she’s probably gotten more of a sense of the world than he does.
Is there a particular era of the comics that you’re using as reference for this film?
Charles Roven: We always use some of the comic, but I don’t think that it’s been used in exactly this way. This is pretty much a creative inspiration of Patti and Geoff’s and they use what the comic has to offer but not any one particular story.
Can you tell us about any of the 80s icons or pop culture references that may be new to this film?
Charles Roven: You mean from the period?
Yeah from the 80s. Are there any references from the film you can tell us about?
Charles Roven: Certainly, the environments of the period are there, things that were culturally important then like the balls.
Any music?
Charles Roven: I think we’re using the music of the period as inspiration, but I don’t know that we used any specific music.
[Interview ended due to set change.]
Charles Roven Interview Part II
Is there a possible Bruce Wayne cameo or anyone from The Justice League because I know number one ended with an email from Bruce?
Charles Roven: That movie started in the present, literally the present, and that threw us into reminiscing when she saw that picture. We pick her up now [To the unit publicist: Have they been yet to the set to the war room? UP: No but we did a war room story presentation. Fellow Journalist: So we know how the film opens.] So you know how the film opens which is on Themyscira, a little life lesson for Diana and then we we see what she's been doing from from the end of World War I until we meet her sort of in 1984. We get a sense of how that time has come to pass and how we find her continuing to try to help the world but in a clandestine way. So that's a long-winded answer of no I can't tease it.
What was the process of coming up with a sequel? Did you start again from scratch as soon as the first film was done?
Charles Roven: No, really we did start from scratch. Look we had the benefit really of having the experience of the wonderful appreciation that the film did but we didn't really start thinking about what we were going to do if we were going to make a second Wonder Woman film until the first one came out. We didn't want to make a conventional sequel. We just really wanted to do something different. The studio was happy for us to come up with some ideas and we really said ‘well, so we've got all this time from World War I until the present, what's the story that we want to tell?’ Patti was the driver of the story that we wanted to tell. She came up with the initial concept and then she started discussing it with Geoff Johns and then the story started to take shape but we picked the time period because it wasn't exactly today but it has a lot of relevance to today.
Did you always know that you wanted to bring Steve Trevor back?
Charles Roven: No, that came out of the conversation. . . There were certain things that we had the benefit of, the relationship between Steve and Diana and how that worked so well in the film and then also how going to Themyscira worked so well in the film. As long as it felt like it was part of the story, then we thought those were good ideas to try to see if we can make those work and we do feel that they're really, you know, completely integrated in Themyscira the story.
So the Amazon Olympics in the beginning are life lesson for Diana? Can you say anything more about that? What's the significance of that opening scene?
Charles Roven: Well, I think it's just like all of us we have experiences as we're growing up and they're relevant to who we are as we get older and face adulthood. In Diana's case, her adulthood lasts a very, very long time because she's immortal and doesn't change, but she still takes those early life lessons and they're very meaningful to her. And sometimes they’re life lessons that, you carry with you then they lose their resonance after a long period of time and then they're re-awakened in you as you have an experience that forces you to think about them again.
And that's what's going to happen in this film?
Charles Roven: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that's what life lessons are.
Can you talk about Kristen’s [Wiig] character and how she’s different from other superhero villains and what makes her her own breed of villain?
Charles Roven: .What allows her to go from Barbara Minerva, this sort of awkward person who's quite brilliant in terms of her abilities as a student of history and her knowledge of archaeology and things like that to metamorphosize into a cheetah. How that comes about is pretty unique. And the other thing that we think is really great is with the choice of Kristen, on the one hand, being able to play that awkward person. If you know of her work, then you know she's going to be really good at doing that, but what's she going to be like when we want her to be badass? But she is. She’s already given us some of that.
Does she have any powers? Like what makes her such a threat?
Charles Roven: Well, she evolves into this creature that is one of the fiercest that you could imagine because she has many, many characteristics of that animal. But she has it in a, let's call it a, you know, in a very, very intense way, even more intense than just a regular cheetah.
What is the challenge to like overcome from the success of the first movie?
Charles Roven: Well, first of all, on the one hand, it's obviously a lot better to have a movie be successful. But, when you have a successful film, that's the challenge because you know you want to make something of that if you can. You also want to make sure that you're giving an audience something that they desire, but that they're not just going to say ‘oh, I knew that what they would do.’ You want it different and exciting and, and still make it feel like it's part of the of the fabric of the first film but still give you some really original things, some curveballs, that you weren't expecting but still you're happy to see as an audience. The first film had some scope. This film has even more scope. We go to a lot of different places around the world in this film and so the global footprint of the movie, both in the making of it and in the realization of it, it's pretty big, it's pretty vast so that's challenging, just to figure out a way to accomplish all that.
What makes Patty the right director in both scenarios, the first one and this one?
Charles Roven: Well, I was a big fan of Patti's since I saw Monster. And so, when we were looking for director, she was always somebody who came to my mind and then I found out that she, in fact, several years before, had met with the guy who was running production at that time, Greg Silverman, who is no longer with the studio, but he was there when we hired Patti for Wonder Woman. And so she’s, for years, wanted to make Wonder Woman and been a big Wonder Woman fan. I think many of you must know that her father was a pilot, a Navy pilot, and she almost did Thor at one time. So, she's always wanted to make movies in this genre. And then just working with her, she's also a writer. She's got great sense of story, a great sense of character and then I watched the shows that she directed on television, the first episode of The Killing, really loved that show. I just think she's immensely talented in every way you need a director to be. She gets great performances. She can do a big scope, big spectacles. She gives stories that you know are fun and funny and exciting but still have an emotional, you know, draw, appeal.
With Chris Pine back any chance you know of any other returning player like a Robin Wright cameo or any other character?
Charles Roven: She let the world know that she’s going to be making an appearance.
Can you talk about what we're going to see from Diana that we haven't seen before? Because we've already seen her origin in the last film and we've seen her in the present day and Justice League and Batman Superman. So, what are we going to see from her in this film that we haven't seen in the other ones?
Charles Roven: I think you're going to see an expansion of her abilities as Wonder Woman. Because, when you saw her in in Wonder Woman, she was just beginning to understand her capabilities and now she's been seasoned, if you will, because she's been doing what she's been doing since the end of World War I to 1984 so however many years that is, it's plenty of time for her to expand her powers. And yet one of the great things about Diana as a character is that she's always learning and she's always getting life lessons and she evolves with those life lessons in a really great way and she does that over the course of the movie and so that just makes her a better character, but it also influences, you know, what she does with her powers.