Potential Spin-Off For The Atom

During the Television Critics Association’s Annual Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, CA, executive producers Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg made a brief mention of a potential spin-off series for the Atom starring Brandon Routh, who’s already been established as Ray Palmer in the Arrow-verse.  Berlanti was careful not to give too much away and said that he was not allowed to say more about it.  After the panel, Nerdist was able to track down Guggenheim and got him to open up a little bit more.

Guggenheim has always been interested in expanding the Arrow-verse:

"The thing that we’ve been talking about is just how do we further expand the universe; and we love Brandon and we love having him on Arrow."

Guggenheim said that the introduction of Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer was originally to give Emily Bett Rickards’s Felicity Smoak a partner in her comic moments:

"Felicity’s voice is of a different show and we always say that Emily’s playing tennis against herself … So we wanted to create a character that could vibrate at her frequency. And Ray really brings that and brings that energy and he’s so much fun to write. He’s a joy to write. Brandon’s so terrific and embodies the role so well that when we talk about how to further expand things, he’s a natural person to talk about. It’s like Brandon said on the panel, originally when we met with him we just wanted to bring a great character onto the show and we wanted a great actor to play him. That’s really how it always starts. With the exception of Grant Gustin on Arrow last year, there’s never been a [decision] to bring in a character with the intention to spin them off. It’s always, “What services the show the best?"

On the Atom’s costume, Guggenheim focused on making it work for Arrow:

"… the costume is just “How do we get it to work on Arrow?” Maya Mani did the design that she always does. It’s her best costume, and that’s really saying something. It’s coming together beautifully. Brandon just did his third fitting with it, and it’s the most ambitious costume we’ve ever done on the show. One of the things I like about it is we did it without consideration of a spinoff. We did it because this is a cool thing to have on Arrow."

Guggenheim also wanted to distinguish the Atom’s suit from the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s Iron Man suit:

"… And our goal when we had an idea to do a super suit was “How do you do it in a way that’s not Iron Man?” That’s the trick creatively. Because we don’t want to duplicate Iron Man, we want to do our own thing. So there’s a lot of practical elements to the costume that on Iron Man they have done with CG. We’re gonna do it practically."

For the toy collectors out there, Guggenheim had some great news:

"… they’re already planning the action figure!"

There you have it.  With Arrow and The Flash already established, and a Supergirl and Teen Titans series on their way, a potential Atom spin-off will feel right at home on TV.  Brandon Routh could definitely carry this show as a lead because he easily pulled it off as the Man of Steel in 2006’s Superman Returns.  Here’s to hoping that this series comes through!  What do you think?