FInal Crisis: Bruce Timm Leaving Supervising Producer Job at WB Animation

Well, this is a bummer, even though it was probably possible to see it coming based on the recent cancellations of Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice: Invasion by Cartoon Network and Warner Bros., but Bruce Timm, the guy who has been driving DC’s animated movie and TV efforts pretty much since Batman: The Animated Series started in 1992, is leaving the Supervising Producer job at Warner Bros. Animation. He’s going to be replaced by James Tucker, the guy who produced Justice League, Legion of Super Heroes and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and he directed the upcoming Superman: Unbound movie coming from DC Animated Originals.

There’s no particular word as to why Timm is leaving beyond the wish “to develop some of his own projects,” but this news was kind of a bummer for Amanda and me, personally. The art centerpiece of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Theater Room is a framed collection of two of Timm’s sketches, of Batman and Batman Beyond, respectively, with pictures of Timm drawing them for us… and with a bonus, a picture of Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series co-producer Paul Dini and his autograph, to boot. So to say that we are fans of Timm’s work with DC’s animated work would be a gross understatement. Just look up and to your left as proof.

But the important thing is whether or not Tucker is the right choice to continue Timm’s work on the generally excellent DC animated properties… and the answer seems to be: probably, yeah. Tucker seems to have a solid vision of what he wants to produce in the future beyond Superman: Unbound, and fans of DC characters who aren’t Superman or Batman are probably going to be especially excited.

“I’d love to use more of a variety of characters, but that’s something I don’t have control over,” [Tucker] says. “Granted Dark Knight Returns was long overdue to be adapted and I’m glad they did it and did it superbly. But beyond that, I’m not really interested in replicating, image by image, word for word, something that was in a comic book, because you can’t replicate that experience or feeling…

“I can’t go into specifics,” he says, “but I have a feeling when we announce our next slate of movies, people are going to be very excited because we will be using Batman, Superman and Justice League as a gateway to exposing other characters… so what we’ll be doing with Flashpoint is kind of changing the dynamic a little bit. Doing things that are based on characters and situations from the comics, but not literal adaptations. They’ll be more like original stories along the lines of what we did with Green Lantern: First Flight and Wonder Woman.

So, if Tucker intends to hew even remotely closely to the original Flashpoint comic book, he will be indeed producing a movie including Batman and Superman to appease the corporate overlords at Warner Bros… and those versions of Superman and Batman will be an emaciated teenager and a murderous and occasionally weeping jerk, respectively. All as a dodge to get viewers to give Flash a chance as a character.

I like it.

Well, we can get a taste of what Tucker wants to do with his animation when Superman: Unbound drops on DVD and Blu-Ray on May 7th… and we can still sincerely hope to see Timm on future animation projects. And if they are half as good as most of the stiff we’ve been seeing for 21 years, we’re in for some good stuff indeed.

(via Voices From Krypton)