DC’s Legends of Tomorrow ran for seven seasons and earned a dedicated fan following who are still fighting to bring the show back, a year after it ended. But it was not always easy: while Legends was ordered straight to series and included fan-favorite characters from other popular TV shows, it took a while to find its identity, and even once it did, living up to its own increasingly unhinged standards became a challenge.
That’s the story of TIME TO BE HEROES: A TOTALLY UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO LEGENDS OF TOMORROW. The upcoming, book-length oral history of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is now funding on Kickstarter (link here: https://www.kickstarter.com/
From ECV Analog and author Russ Burlingame (Best Movie Ever: An Oral History of Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont’s Josie and the Pussycats), TIME TO BE HEROES features both archival interviews with cast and crew members, and all-new conversations, plus never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photos.
Never-before-seen interviews include cast members like Tala Ashe (Zari Tomaz/Zari Tarazi), Jes Macallan (Ava Sharpe), Adam Tsekhman (Gary Green), and behind-the-scenes creatives like showrunners Phil Klemmer and Keto Shimizu. Legends co-creator Marc Guggenheim and producing director Kevin Mock also join the fun.
TIME TO BE HEROES starts at the beginning – with backdoor pilot episodes of Arrow and The Flash – and follows the series and characters all the way through to the end, when the show introduced Booster Gold and ended on a cliffhanger. In addition to giving insight into the creative process, TIME TO BE HEROES will examine what made the series so beloved, and how it managed to differentiate itself in a crowded field of comic book-to-screen adaptations.
“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was a show that meant a lot to a lot of people. To an audience that often felt like they weren’t ‘seen’ on network TV, the show provided boundary-pushing superhero entertainment and gave its fans the kind of TV family that you don’t usually see: one that is diverse ethnically, in terms of sexual orientation, and philosophically,” Burlingame said. “I was there the whole time. As a reporter in my day job, I have been on the Waverider numerous times over the years, dating all the way back to before the show was actually on the air. Legends of Tomorrow itself is great, but the narrative behind it — a network TV show that found its identity and its audience by leaning into the insanity of its premise and ‘screwing things up for the better’ — that’s what really made me fall in love with Legends, which I think is bound to become a true cult classic.”
Russ Burlingame is an entertainment journalist living in Upstate New York. He has previously written books about the 2001 cult-classic movie Josie and the Pussycats, and about DC superhero Booster Gold.
To back the project, head to Kickstarter: