Down From Record 15 Series To 6 On Air, Greg Berlanti Talks Peak TV Demise, Strikes, Scooby-Doo & That Scarlett Johansson-Channing Tatum Chemistry In ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ – The Deadline Q&A

Sony Pictures

EXCLUSIVE: At the height of Peak TV, Greg Berlanti‘s career took off like a rocket. His Berlanti Productions had a record-breaking 15 shows on the air simultaneously, from DC properties like The Flash, Supergirl and Arrow to Riverdale and Blindspot. Berlanti will have six shows on air this fall, which gave him time to launch Fly Me to the Moon, starring Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson and Ray Romano. The rom-com pairs Johansson as a gifted but shady sales person trying to outrun her past, and Tatum as a fighter pilot-turned-NASA leader trying to help beat the Russians to the moon. She comes to Cape Canaveral at the behest of a Nixon fixer (Harrelson), hired to stage the moon landing for a telecast to run on global TV if things go awry. It’s the first film Berlanti has directed since 2018’s Love, Simon, a crowd pleasing theatrical release.

Apple Original Films originally intended Berlanti’s new film to go straight to streaming on Apple TV+. Strong test scores that indicated test audiences responded to the period premise and throwback chemistry between Johannson and Tatum prompted bringing in Sony to mastermind a theatrical detour that begins Friday.

Here, Berlanti talks the screen chemistry between his leads, the film’s touchy topic, the role William Paley played in birthing Scooby-Doo, and how contraction and the end of Peak TV could lead to higher-quality television.

DEADLINE: An odd starting point, but I gotta ask. Everybody you see in the Cape Canaveral control room in your film wears white shirts and black ties, as you would expect in a 1969 NASA space launch movie. Except for Channing Tatum’s Cole Davis, who stands out in these bright blue and yellow polo shirts. Did you fear we might otherwise lose him in that crowd of egghead scientists?

GREG BERLANTI: Why did I have him dress that way? A little bit of his backstory is inspired by a man named Deke Slayton, who oversaw the astronauts and when he was younger, he had had a problem with his heart and overcame it to actually participate in the program. When you watch the Apollo 11 doc and any of the footage that we were lucky enough to get hold of, something like 10,000 hours of it is still unseen, he just is so pronounced. He stands out. That was a large part of the inspiration, and  in part somewhat for his backstory, and also from Mary Zophres’ wardrobe design allowed him to pop in that way. He was a figurehead amongst those guys, and dressed with that same flair and style. With each one of the characters, we tried to use some NASA touchstone.

DEADLINE: The pairing of Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum has been likened to famous throwback two-handers like the films that Doris Day and Rock Hudson. How did you get them, and what did you see that might make a good chemical match?

BERLANTI: Scarlett was developing the project and she sent me the script. We’d met on another project a couple years before that, and she thought of me. I really fell in love with the script by Rose Gilroy, it reminded me so much of so many of the films I grew up loving in the eighties and nineties, these big, fun original comedies with movie stars. I was really drawn to the story; I was a little bit of Apollo space nut as a kid, and so I thought, wow, it will be a rare occurrence that I’ll get to merge these worlds that tonally is something in my wheelhouse.

I knew that this being her first big producing effort and also because she was starring that I’d have an opportunity to work with both her and all the amazing people that would want to work with her, which all came true. Channing was the first conversation I had after getting the job. We came in at the same time. This was summer two years ago and it was happening in the fall. Lot of prep and hiring everyone in each department and casting. But I knew it was a go film.

DEADLINE: I was 9 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and being hunched over the TV, watching history in the making. Why do I have the sickening suspicion that the three of you probably weren’t even born then?

BERLANTI: I’m the closest. I was born in ‘72, so they were still flying missions to the moon, just at the tail end of the Apollo program. But having grown up in the seventies, there wasn’t a day I wasn’t on set that there wasn’t some prop or some piece of furniture or something on news or some magazine or something on the Eastern Airlines hub that we built. It all brought me right back to my childhood. It wasn’t at the forefront of my brain for making the film, but it was really rewarding throughout it to spend time back in that moment.

DEADLINE: How big a space nut were you?

BERLANTI: My first meeting for the project, I showed them the first thing I bought for my son’s room when he was born. A life-sized photo of Neil Armstrong’s suit when they took it off of him. I definitely had a lot of visions of going to space as a kid, and I drank Tang and read everything. There were a series of comic books even then that you could still, that I got ahold of and would read, and they were real-life heroes. You felt that still in the ’70s when I was a kid, for sure.

DEADLINE: Scarlett’s Kelly Jones character probably tells more lies than Donald Trump in a debate. And here you got Cole, who it seems like has probably never told a single one. What was the challenge in keeping her redeemable and him from seeming too much like the stoic Superman guy?

BERLANTI: I really responded to their characters in the script from the very beginning, that Audrey Hepburn-Spencer Tracy-esque vibe. The sophisticated New Yorker and the working class man. Even moreso than some other screwball comedy heroes and heroines. I also loved that her character was so central to the whole journey and it was through her POV of entering this world that there was a modern twist. That she was this artist and this cynic who becomes a believer. That’s very resonant with the time that we’re in, especially looking back at this moment. For me, she was the one that had the arc.

His character…we were lucky to shoot at Cape Kennedy and NASA and it’s imbued with the sense of the human achievement that happens and it’s still happening. Of doing the impossible, together, and that sense of unity. That felt like just the jumping off point, for him. They took all that and developed such a strong dynamic together.

DEADLINE: What two-hander rom-com was your North Star?

BERLANTI: I helped start one of the first video rental stores in my hometown, the ones that got shut down by Blockbuster. They really did a number on us. I would pick the movies and my favorite part of my night was picking what movie I would play, over and over on the monitors. My holy trinity in this space was Working Girl, Tootsie and Broadcast News. They were workspace environments with sophisticated comedy and drama, and a blend of tones. And I must’ve watched each of them a hundred times. They were very much on my mind when we set off on this journey. That’s how I wanted the performances to be, as captivating as rockets going off.

DEADLINE: You’ve taken the Oscar-winning The Descendants co-writer Jim Rash and turned him into this diva director from Madison Avenue who choreographs a fake moon landing on a soundstage. I’ll put you on the spot: Exactly which diva showrunner or film director is this character of his, with all the affections, modeled after?

BERLANTI: Well…I will say, I’ll give you the real origin. So he wasn’t written as Jim Rash, as Jim does this thing brilliantly in the film. Jim came in, he was one of the first auditions I had, if not the first. And I said to him, [the character] is full of himself and in his own world, but he’s brilliant and misunderstood and he thinks of this fake moon landing as the biggest production he’ll ever be a part of. It’s opening night on Broadway now, give your opening-night speech to everybody, all the crew that have worked on the fake moon landing. And he began to improv for about a half hour. He just went off and it was so brilliant. I thought, oh my gosh, that is, we have to start typing and start writing this down. Look, I’ve worked with any number of people, and am friends with any number of directors who are highly regarded and have their own imprimatur … we were into the wardrobe portion and he was performing, and I asked Jim which directors he was modeling it after, who had he worked with because he would tell you me at times probably. I definitely have friends in the business who were cited. I can’t wait for them to see the film and see if they see any commonalities between Jim and themselves.

DEADLINE: But you’re not going to tell me?

BERLANTI: I don’t want to get in trouble this early.

DEADLINE: Scarlett’s character is conscripted by this Nixon fixer, played by Woody Harrelson, to go to Florida and stage this moon landing in case the real one goes awry. This country right now is so polarized and conspiracy-theory mad that it would not be surprising if some saw it and said, now you see? I realize this is a spirited rom-com, but it might validate the cynicism we have so much of, heading into the presidential elections. What sold NASA on taking part? It’s a tribute to the space agency’s greatest accomplishment, but your plot is probably the last thing they want to perpetuate.

BERLANTI: We were very cognizant of it. I’m not sure I would’ve signed on if I didn’t know that NASA was as much a fan of the story as I was. It’s impossible in this day and age to do a story surrounding one of the OG conspiracy theories without being cognizant of the fact that we live in this hyper-politicized time. As much as it celebrates NASA and really honors what was achieved, the movie has something to say about why the truth is important, and it’s done in a fun way. But the whole third act of the film when I read it … without revealing what happens, we’re watching both the fake and the real, and we want the real to be true. I felt like if I can achieve that, if I can get the audience to that place where they want the same thing that I wanted when I was reading the script, then what a better thing to have in this moment where the truth is under assault, to demonstrate in a thematic entertaining way why it should matter. I don’t think you can do that by being timid. And so we kind of owned that part of it. We have fun with it, but I do think our heart is in the right place.

DEADLINE: This is as good a performance as Johansson has delivered in some time, and her chemistry with Tatum makes you think they should do more together. Is there a moment that proved to you this chemistry works so well?

BERLANTI: Yes, in my second test for chemistry with them, because it’s such an unknowable thing to define. Everybody’s always asking you about it and the studios executives are asking you about it. On the day people are asking, do I want to keep watching what they’re doing? Do I wish I could just spy and watch these two people talk for hours? And from the second they were around each other, that was how I felt about them. It was there, in rehearsals, and then it becomes just a technical thing of, okay, how do we make this moment funnier or this moment more earnest or truthful? What’s brilliant about these two actors is, you never don’t believe them. I just felt like, okay, I got to just figure out the best way to capture that.

We had inclement weather on one of the first scenes we shot, on a pier. It was a long scene between the two of them, when she’s proposing filming the moon landing for the first time. He’s seeing for the first time that they’re on equal footing for the first time. We shot in inclement weather and it still worked. Everyone’s like, well, it works and I’m like, yeah, but the weather’s horrible. It’s supposed to be Florida. But to see that even in the bad weather with the wind blowing their hair, these two were still…you were so focused on them, it made me realize, okay, even in that horrible weather. Now I’d like to do in when it’s beautiful outside, and dreamy.

DEADLINE: This was destined directly for Apple TV+. Tom Rothman had a pleasant surprise when the Sydney Sweeney-Glen Powell rom-com Anyone But You over-indexed and made Sony a fortune. It’s understandable he’d want to put another rom-com through his marketing and distribution pipeline. What happened?

BERLANTI: We started testing it this time last year, in Denver, then California and Texas. Everywhere we went, the most common thought about the film from the audiences was, this feels like a theatrical movie. Whether that was the chemistry of these stars, the rockets going off, or the moon landing, it was a heavy, heavy, heavy recurrent response. There was originality and it showed how desperate they were for a story where you didn’t know what was going to happen. The not really knowing is part of the fun of going to the movies. And so Apple, I would say just in their creative wonderful partnership, they realized people want to see this first in the movie theater, so let’s expose it to some studios. They did that at the end of last year, and Sony raised their hand and it worked out. I got that call right before Christmas, that we would be coming to theaters, and it would be a July movie. Suddenly the stakes rise, because now you’re exposed. You’re wondering what the box office is going to be. We made the best version of this, as good as we were able, but now I really do want audiences to laugh together, to feel that communal joy. I think that the world can use more unifying forms of entertainment and we’re happy and excited. As nervous as I might be at times, I really just pinch myself and feel, this has been in every regard, just a real dream opportunity.

DEADLINE: It’s the opposite of Rick Linklater’s Hit Man with Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. It killed at Toronto and got bought there for $20-something million and opened directly on the streamer. It has delivered in the Netflix audience rankings, but doesn’t get the cultural zeitgeist pop that a P&A spend and theater release brings. Apple has embraced the hybrid strategy more on films like Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon. How much does it mean to you, to see the TV commercials and the P&A spend, and slip into theaters opening weekend to see if you’ve got a hit?

BERLANTI: I think for me, as an audience member, it does matter. As someone who works in both TV and movies, I think the more points of entry for the audience in this world today and the wider of a landscape you can cover, whether we’re just talking network television or being on a broadcast channel or going to a streamer or being in theaters and then going to a streaming place, it does enhance the opportunity for people to view something. There’s a wider berth of people who know about it, and it gives it a longer shelf life. I’m always trying to advocate for things to have as much life as possible. There’s a stickiness to it, to borrow a word I’m not a fan of in this business., But here it applies.

DEADLINE: It’s been six years since you last directed a film, Love, Simon. Why so long?

BERLANTI: I didn’t wake up every day feeling like, oh, I have to go direct a movie. Showrunning and directing are very similar things to me in terms of what stories are you drawn to, and what’s the best means of curating the emotional experience for the audience. I’ve been really blessed and fortunate on the TV side of things to tell a lot of stories that I was excited by. I came off Love, Simon, and that was just what the universe presented to me, and what I followed until I read this script and I thought, oh wow, okay. I should do this. I have a lot to say in this area and I can really contribute. Maybe I should use a different metric if I wanted to shoot another movie sooner, but that isn’t my nature.

DEADLINE: Peak TV is over, you should have more time that you’re not running 15 shows. What do you want next in movies?

BERLANTI: I started my career writing and directing the first movie I did. I probably would want to do something from scratch, and have to create the time to do that. The women and men I admire greatly were often writers and directors. And since writing is I came from, I’d like to create something. As personal as Love, Simon was to me, I didn’t write it and this I didn’t write either. I was happy to usher them, but I think I’d like to create more time for something I write.

DEADLINE: When Love, Simon came out in 2018, it succeeded even though you didn’t see that many films built around a young gay man who gets outed and have it end happily. As an openly gay man yourself who probably wasn’t always, what about that film compelled you to take time from the show running to direct it?

BERLANTI: I had about 15 shows then. Honestly, I don’t count them because there it’s more about the people I do them with. Even sometimes after things are canceled in my mind, they still exist. I have to keep believing in them even after we’re told they are not going to work out. But Love, Simon … I go back to that story I told you about working the video store in my hometown. I still categorize movies in terms of where they would have been, on what shelf in the store I would’ve put them on. Love, Simon was always that movie to me that wasn’t on that shelf and deserved to be. I really set forth with that film to add to that John Hughes-esque pantheon of teen movies that were nostalgic and wistful and timeless in their own way.

But in this case had a character at the center who had not been at the center before. That was the spirit of that one. This is the third studio film I’ve worked on now, and we snuck Glove Simon the weekend before the opening of the first studio film I did. It probably says something about the kinds of films I’m totally attracted to that our mixture of tones and the studios have all been very proud to offer them up early to the audience to kind of get the word of mouth going. And one of the gratifying things of that being a theatrical movie, which today I think I’m pretty sure most people would want to do it streaming, was the joy of sitting in a theater and watching straight people or people of all kinds applaud a gay kiss, the same way they would’ve applauded any other kiss. That was a visceral thing, and the number of kids since who have written to me or called me, or young adults in the business who have approached me and told me that they or someone they know came out to their family at the end of that movie or in the midst of the movie, or right after at home…you realize, I think at some point like, oh, that’s why I did that, to connect with individuals in that regard. That was incredibly, incredibly rewarding.

DEADLINE: When you had that many shows on the air at one time, how do you handle all that? You can’t do it like Taylor Sheridan has, writing most all of them…

BERLANTI: I was never like those singular people. I think it’s community, who you’re choosing to work with. I’m sure in your capacity you’re with a bunch of different writers over the course of a day. It wasn’t any more unique than that, for me. The thing I love most in this business or the thing that I’ve always sort of gone back to again and again is just sitting in a room with people, crafting a story. I’ve found that the more time I dedicate to that, it leads to actual productions that then you have to figure out, how are we going to manage this? But the reality is it always starts from a very pure place of getting excited by a person, an idea, a narrative, and wanting to help them make it real. And that’s been my guiding force.

Whether that leads to three shows or 12 shows or no shows, my day doesn’t really change much. There is all the production commitments that come along with that, whether it’s casting or post or those things. One of the genuine joys of my life in this business is actually just giving other people who never had their own show before on the air, all the tools or knowledge or protection or whatever I wished I had as I was starting out. And that is a very invigorating thing for me.

DEADLINE: You held a record for the 15 shows on the air, but the television business has contracted and you’ll have six this fall. What’s your take on this change and how has your company pivoted?

BERLANTI: I’m old enough now that I’ve been through a few expansions and contractions, twists and turns in the business when people are saying, oh, this is selling now and this isn’t selling. Or the advent of streamers. I would say a few things are obviously happening. One, the episode count number is going down, whether that’s on broadcast or streamers. When we were doing these shows at the start of my career, it was 24 episodes a year. You had a very clear year. You knew when you started, you knew when you finished, you knew how many episodes you had to be in production on, at one time. I think as money and the business contracts, originality tends to go up. People are more apt to bet on younger artists or artists who don’t cost as much so they take a flyer or a risk on.

That ultimately can only be good. I think TV is so much about character and so who you’re casting. And what those characters are, whether it’s in a world of cops or whether it’s in a world of superheroes, or whatever. It is vitally important to focus on those things. And that is a cost savings too. The better the stories are…we are going back to one of the ways we pivoted is we’re making shows in less days, but because we’ve always done a lot of network, that was a very comfortable place for us at the height of peak TV. Even though we had a lot of shows, they were very affordably done.

My hope is that when you see something like Suits explode on Netflix as happened last year, it would be nice to see some of the things that made TV return in more episodes. It gives more chance for things to catch on and stay on for audiences to invest in those things. And more great acting and good characters. I think there’ll be more of an investment in that, and that will allow for more things to stay on longer to connect with an audience. That would be good. And then the final thing I’ll say about it is one of the great things that used to be true of broadcast when there was more of it, was you could have an idea for a series and less than a year later, it could be on the air.

You could have an idea for an episode, and less than eight weeks later, it could be on the air. There was a vitality to television; it wasn’t trying to be film in that way. The process was not as slowed down. Now I think there’s a real opportunity in places, and I think you’ll start to see it just expediting some of the process. The writers, we would change whole storylines of a season based on what an actor was doing on the day. It was so brilliant that we would go down and rip out the storylines and change it all. That kind of vitality in the storytelling makes up for what people are spending on it. And if people want to see television have that kind of breadth and power that it had, and singularity, I think the model’s going to have to shift again a little bit.

DEADLINE: You were so prolific on the CW and that’s been revamped. You okay with that?

BERLANTI: We have a few that are about to come on for their last seasons. We have All American, that was picked up for an additional season that we’ll start shooting again this summer. And then we have two on the NBC fall schedule, one called Brilliant Minds, which hasn’t premiered yet, and one Found which premiered last year at the end of the year. It was obvious from a few years ago that CW would do less programming so we come in and we figure out what stories we want to tell. The joy of being at Warner Bros is we can make shows everywhere.

DEADLINE: You move from youth-centric and DC superhero stuff to procedurals. Is that you evolving as you grow older and your interests change?

BERLANTI: Probably not. What’s funny is when I started in TV, I was doing Dawson’s Creek and I kept trying to sell family shows and I had to write Everwood to show the world I was a family show guy. Then I went over and did Brothers and Sisters, and suddenly I couldn’t get anything but family shows on the air. I was auditioning for superhero jobs and I couldn’t get them. Then finally I did. So it is always changing. It’s always about character for me. And so whether or not we’re applying our character rules and telling great character stories to a certain genre like superhero, I think genre storytelling will continue to thrive and exist. There’s a few that we’re working on, but if it’s just straight dramas or character dramas or great premium stuff, I think we’re kind of unlimited.

And so I think very often, sort of like the branding of a network, which happens retroactively, people go, oh, well, this is really the So-and-So Network, it has a certain hit in whatever direction. I’ll identify what that is, posthumously, to doing something that seems to click. But right now we’re developing a bunch of new material and we’re selling everywhere, and it’s very exciting. It’s easier and more fun to just wake up every day and your phone isn’t exploding with a million problems. Maybe you’ve got 15 or 20 as opposed to what was many more withy all those shows. The peak part of it was not the most peaceful place to create in.

DEADLINE: You were so prolific in the DC series game that we speculated maybe you should take over when Walter Hamada left. James Gunn and Peter Safran now reign. You have Dead Boy Detectives returning, but have your superhero ambitions waned?

BERLANTI: It was a moment in time for me, and one plan, the size and the scope of which we were altogether able to achieve. The closeness that I had with many of the actors, and still have, and other writers and directors and the family that we built over that time. And the opportunity where every year we were doing these big crossover episodes and all the different showrunners would come in from all the different shows. To create in that way was such a joy and incredibly challenging. But it is nothing I would try and replicate again at this moment. That felt very singular. I love Warner Bros. I wish them all the best with these amazing characters. We had a credo that I would say to everybody all the time, which is, we’re so lucky to have these characters. Let’s return them to the shelf more valuable than when we took them off. It was very much about that, and trying to build a world and a place where everybody who loved them as much as we did could come and tell stories. Now I think it’s time for new; the torch has been passed beautifully, and I’m really excited by all they’re doing there now.

DEADLINE: What’s cooking with your live-action Scooby-Doo series?

BERLANTI: One of my first jobs in this business was as a temp at Hanna-Barbera. I’d sit with Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna while they autographed animation cels. I would go in the morning and I would retrieve with my boss a bunch of these animation cels. I’d go to Bill Hanna’s office first. He was a very stoic guy. His office was very spare. And then came my favorite part of the day, going to see Joe Barbera. He was such a life force. He would sign the cels, but he would stop and regale me with the greatest stories. He was such a raconteur.

DEADLINE: Give us a good one…

BERLANTI: He would tell stories of how Scooby was created and what they were  thinking, and how it was the late ’60s and kids felt under assault by adults, and they felt overwhelmed and they needed to be empowered. When they pitched it to Bill Paley he was like, you need a dog or something. And that was the birth of Scooby-Doo. Joe was such a special storyteller, and I was so, wow. I’d always loved them as a kid. And again, with any of the properties be they Hanna-Barbera or DC or anything at Warners, you feel lucky to be the historian who helps usher them into a new generation. You just go back to the spirit and the DNA of what makes ’em special. With Scooby-Doo, we went out and heard pitches for a year and a half and finally found one that we really felt really captured it. I just was working on the pitch for it this morning, for the first episode. So we’re really pumped.

DEADLINE: Your name surfaced during the strike. First for donating $800,000 to the Strike Fund when it was badly needed. And then when Warners looked to suspending yours and other big deals. How long will it take the business to get back on good footing? What gains made it worth the pain?

BERLANTI: It was a trying time. You feel blessed though, so you give back in ways if you can. My number one vibe during both Covid and the strikes … probably it didn’t hurt that I came from a middle-class family. I’ve always identified in the business with a lot of people when I’m making the shows or making the movies that are putting in the hours every day to make the thing, who aren’t getting the credit or the notoriety or really the money for it.

You see the effort and the time and the energy that’s going in. During Covid more than the strikes, I’d say, what would my dad have done when he was running a production plant when I was a kid? What would he have done to make sure everybody felt okay and safe? So that was the emotion. I didn’t really have a lot of energy and time for maybe some of the sturm und drang that others did. I was very concerned about the people I worked with, and still am. You hear the emotion in my voice … I still know that so many individuals that I encountered during that time, and the kind of letters that we got back, it was about individuals that had to tell their family they couldn’t afford groceries that month.

I am happy we’re on the other side of it. I think that there are people that know much better than I do about the economics of it, but just on a human level and a humanistic level, I hope we never have to go through anything like that in this business again. I think two of those things back-to-back were so dispiriting for so many individuals that have given up so much of their life to help other people’s dreams come true. And from now to the end of my career, I could try and give back to those people and it still wouldn’t make up for the loss.

DEADLINE: One thing that came up often in the WGA strike was preserving the writers rooms for the good of the ecosystem and training future show creators and showrunners. You had 15 going at once. How important to what you do are these writers’ rooms and does it feel like this ecosystem has been…

BERLANTI: Preserved? I’m not sure yet. I think the shortening of the episode numbers is, to me, as destructive as almost anything else. I think we can make the episodes for less. Everybody’s very creative in this business about how to figure out how to do that. But I think so much of the stability of the writers room and so much of the stability of the business came from people knowing, alright, I got on this show. I’m going to work 10, 11 months a year, and this many episodes. There was a residual structure that’s part of the economic model. Which is why you see me pushing for, not just for the ecosystem, but just for the health of television in general. I think the more it doesn’t try to be movies or a miniseries — which are all great — but the more TV tries to be TV, which is that part of it that was working so well, I think that has to thrive again before you’ll see a tremendous number of writers’ rooms where people can move up. That’s just where my personal push is; the more episodes you can do, the more people get hired to write and direct, and the more of a healthy home you can build. But if you’re doing six episodes over a year and a half, it’s very hard to build those kind of opportunities.