‘Arrow’ Felt The Pressure To Save The CW, Recalls Creator Marc Guggenheim

Hey, no pressure, Arrow ! Just save The CW if you can, m’kay?

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That was the message Marc Guggenheim heard as the co-creator and executive producer of the DC Comics series that ran from 2012 to 2020 on the network. During Wednesday’s installment of The Showrunner Whisperer podcast, Guggenheim admitted that he felt “the pressure of keeping the whole network on the air.”

He added that then-Warner Bros. TV chairman Peter Roth “took us out to lunch and basically laid out for us in incredible detail the reality that if Arrow wasn’t a hit, there would be no more CW.”

For those that don’t recall the good ‘ol days of CW, Arrow was a superhero series from Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg that was based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. The series ended up spawning what was dubbed the Arrowverse, with spinoffs like The Flash , Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl .

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“I don’t think we could have done it with the amount of leeway and creative freedom that we had. It was a very special, unique time in the business,” recalled Guggenheim.

Amell is now the lead in NBC ‘s Suits L.A . pilot, a new extension of the Suits universe from Aaron Korsh .

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