Last month, Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen gave a shout out to Bruce Wayne on Arrow. Den of Geek caught up with Amell, who revealed the whole thing was his idea. How he got in front of the right people to make it all happen is a pretty funny story.
“The original version of that script came up right before [San Diego Comic-Con],” Amell said. “It was Oliver referencing a famous person’s name. I can’t remember what the placeholder was. I think it might have been Justin Beiber. I looked at it and I thought to myself, ‘this is a cool opportunity.’”
Amell said he spoke to Arrow producer Greg Berlanti about his Batman idea, but Berlanti said he’d have better luck pitching DC’s Geoff Johns directly.
“I was at the DC Comics party at Comic-Con and I couldn’t track [Geoff] down,” Amell explained. “The next thing I knew I ended up in a four way conversation with [Warner Bros. TV President] Peter Roth, [DC Entertainment President] Diane Nelson, and [Warner Bros. CEO] Kevin Tsujihara. So I said ‘guys, I have an idea that will cost you nothing! It will be really fun and it will open the door to a lot of possibilities.’… I had this holy trinity of DC and Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. overall in front of me, and I pitched this idea, and I had all my follow up points, and Kevin Tsujihara just goes, ‘Yeah, sure. That sounds fun. Do that.’”
Here’s video of Amell telling the story:
SOURCE: Den of Geek
