Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: 9B Collective, Aldis Hodge, blue beetle, interview, Mike Uwandi, Phillip Boutté Jr., Warner Bros, Xolo Maridueña

Blue Beetle Design Studio Founders on Marvel/DC, Streaming & More

9B Collections founders Phillip Boutté Jr. and Mike Uwandi talk to Bleeding Cool about WB's Blue Beetle, Marvel vs. DC, Streaming & more.

Phillip Boutté Jr., Mike Uwandi, and Aldis Hodge combined their wealth of experience in Hollywood to create 9B Collective to help spotlight POC artists and talent for new opportunities. All three have had some of the biggest high-profile projects, including DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Godzilla, spanning several blockbuster franchises throughout their careers. As work became readily available in the streaming era, so have the demands from major studios to keep up to the point where it alienated overworked writers and performers as their labor agreements expired, resulting in the current WGA & SAG-AFTRA strikes. While promoting their latest film in Warner Bros' Blue Beetle, Boutté Jr. and Uwandi spoke to Bleeding Cool about a variety of topics, including comparing their work in DC and Marvel, how they're adjusting to the increased demand in the streaming era, what other genres they hope to do, and how they're adapting to the current strikes. The film follows Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), who becomes an alien symbiotic host through a mysterious artifact, bestowing the recent college graduate with a suit of armor capable of extraordinary powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes a superhero.

Blue Beetle Designer on Marvel vs. DC & Surviving the Strikes

What do you find the biggest differences between Marvel and DC?
Uwandi: One of the differences is that Marvel is centralized, which allows them to have consistency going from project to project, whereas DC at the time is not so much. Each project has a new director and usually a different head with a different taste. They bring on different artists who don't always like to meld in the same way but offer different voices, which is cool. That's one of the bigger things I've noticed between the two.

Boutté Jr: It's my tone, and it is different. The way they work is a bit different, too, like Mike was saying. The Marvel Universe is much more linear or connected, specific, and one thing hinges on another. DC feels more like storytelling was like, "We're going to do this thing over here," although now the plan is to unify it somewhat more. I'm excited to see what James Gunn does because he does ensemble cast better than anyone in terms of how you can have multiple characters that are brand new, and you care about each one of them. That's hard to do. You'll be successful by centralizing and focusing on a few characters at a time.

How do you feel you've evolved through the changing environment of entertainment? Do you think you've adapted in the streaming era, or has it become more difficult?
Boutté Jr: It's complicated. That's a good question. There was an ebb-and-flow at first. There was a ton of work and an explosion of "content." I wouldn't say I like that word, but there was all this stuff, everyone's fanning out and doing all these different things. The bubble then got too big. There was too much to concentrate on. The critical thing, especially in an artistic medium like film, is to always centralize yourself on story and character first, then expand out. There was too much of it, and it got a little hard to focus.
Also, streaming it all has made it difficult because you can't focus. It's like, "Do I watch this? Do I watch that? I started watching this, and then they canceled it. I wasted my time." A lot is going on, and with the comic book movie stuff, it's getting to the story's glory and not letting the audience fail or falter, ensuring that there's a build for them and they can be invested. It's also finding new ways of visual storytelling, like "How can we do this suit differently than we've done other suits in the past? How can we make these characters look or feel different?"

All that plays an important role in where we are now, and it's been not easy to kind of make those distinctions to try and figure out where to pull in a way to take heat from something else. I always find solace in fandom, so I'm such a nerd that I like to say, "What do fans want to see?" Because it's a specific thing. It would be best if you gave them what they're looking for. They should be able to go and be excited about seeing that thing that they've been reading for years. It also should offer them something they can't get from, because it's a new medium. There's a balance, and if you overstep it, you have fans angry like, "This character would never look this way or do that." Sometimes it's too accurate. It feels like watching something that they've already seen.

Uwandi: Movies like 'Spider-Verse' or 'Blue Beetle' offer much more heart within the story. It allows people to connect easily, but films like Spider-verse don't feel algorithmic when you've seen this movie a million times and know the outcome. It creates things where people feel like they've already seen the movie, so they don't see it. As Phil said, expanding the fandom helps because, at one point, only certain groups felt super included, and now it's a lot more open, allowing artists to push the medium as well. Before, it was suit-heavy; now, you have artists pushing different ideas related to pop culture that are current. For example, there was a part of 'Across the Spider-verse' where they all pointed at each other. So many memes presented themselves in that movie where people said, "That's hilarious! This is current. This doesn't feel like something that could have been written ten years ago. This feels like it was written right now." Things like that allow it to open, help expand, and the more casual fans who may not be into comics into the genre as well. It creates a good network overall.

Were there other genres you were hoping to get into?
Uwandi: Fantasy [Both laugh].

Boutté Jr: I like fantasy. That's something I'd like to do; sci-fi and horror are fun for me. I also have a background in music and dance. That would be interesting and combine all of those mediums, but definitely, fantasy because fantasy is untapped, especially for people. It's very open. There's not a lot that's been done. The inclusion there is pretty low.

Uwandi: Every culture has lore, but not everyone's lore's been expanded upon. When it comes to things like that, where someone takes a chance on expanding culture more, especially in a fantasy realm, it reverberates outward anyway and starts to affect other genres, which is fantastic. We would almost get a revival of some of these genres that may have grown stale due to using the same inspirations.
Boutté Jr: It's going to be interesting. Mike has said this before, but where we are right now, which is fun, is where in that part of content creation or filmmaking. We've repeatedly seen the same story and people in front, and they're like, "There might be a part of a movie where they pass by this whole civilization, and it's interesting." Now we're telling a movie about that. We're now looking like the main characters here. We looked over to the left and asked, "What's that?" We're focusing on that. That will be cool, like that's a thing, and people want to see that.

You guys are sort of in limbo right now as far as productions go; given the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, what are you doing in the meantime?
Boutté Jr: It's difficult because there are many things that you can't talk about or do during a strike. We've been preparing and setting up our own projects. There are things we want to pitch when things come back up so that we can either produce things or start creating shows, which would be great and can also provide more opportunities. The key thing for us is knowing we help foster a lot of new talent and young artists. We want to make sure that they have avenues to explore their creativity and then also explore their creativity in a way that amplifies their culture, background, or makeup. That's going to be important moving forward. That's what we've been doing during this time.

Uwandi: Ultimately, like 9B has been a change you want to see, type of company. In this case, we recognize an issue similar to what we just talked about, and we're like, "We have the means to do that. We have artists, writers, and ideas. Let's create the pipeline and able to enable that happening."

Blue Beetle, which also stars Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Raoul Max Trujillo, Susan Sarandon, and George Lopez, is currently in theaters.

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