Two of DC’s most vibrant and engaging animated shows are colliding with the new feature film Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse. As the irreverently wacky Titans observe the latest DC Super Hero Girls adventure, they find themselves meeting the group, leading to an epic team-up to save the fate of two worlds. With the movie blending plenty of humor and genuine heart, prolific animator and producer James Tucker wouldn’t have it any other way.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Tucker revealed the origins of the animated crossover. He also explained the enduring elasticity of taking DC properties into a wide range of creative directions and reflected on co-writing the Justice League Unlimited comic book continuation with J.M. DeMatteis.
CBR: How did the idea to cross over Teen Titans Go! with DC Super Hero Girls first come about?
James Tucker: They always had a place in the movie in the third act. They were always the third act surprise in the original draft of the script. This is the longest movie that I’ve worked on that I’ve only been able to focus on just this movie, it’s been wild. We had done our storyboards, and the people a little further up were like, “We could use a little more Titans.”
It was all [screenwriter] Jase Ricci who came up with the meta angle to add to it. It was fun. It was like the Titans were watching the movie together with the audience at first. Then we threw a nice song in it, which is always helpful, but it came about organically. As things were evolving, people were like, “This could use more of this and that,” and the Titans are usually popular, so it was a no-brainer for the powers that be.
Teen Titans Go! has sort of become the Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the DC Universe and Warner Bros. What did that unique perspective bring to DC Super Hero Girls here?
The great thing about the Titans is that you can make them say things that the fans themselves are thinking. We even have them own up that the Titans were more popular on the Cartoon Network than DC Super Hero Girls. There are in-jokes throughout, and they really have the perfect voice. We make fun of the Titans’ insane popularity. [laughs] It’s a very honest way of looking at them, going, “The Titans are in this movie, so that’ll give us a little bump.” [laughs] The thing is, everyone knows that, so why pretend otherwise? Also, fans of Teen Titans Go! who maybe haven’t sampled DC Super Hero Girls, they’ll watch this movie because [the Titans] are in it, but it also exposes them to DC Super Hero Girls; that’s a win-win.
To expand on that, you’ve been working on DC Super Hero Girls for a long time. How do they mesh with the wackiness of Teen Titans Go!?
I think if we were doing this project before Teen Titans Go! to the Movies, I would’ve said that the Teen Titans’ inclusion could undermine the heart of what the DC Super Hero Girls did. In the time since Teen Titans Go! to the Movies came out, I saw that there is a story here and some heart, and yet, it still feels like the same characters. It’s always challenging to take something that runs for 11 minutes and create a 70- to 90-minute story around it and those characters. The tone has to be something more than just jokes.
After I saw Teen Titans Go! to the Movies, I saw how they could adapt, open up the characters, give them some heart, and thought we could do that and fit that into what we’re doing with DC Super Hero Girls in this movie. Teen Titans Go! to the Movies showed me that the Teen Titans can be in a different franchise without totally sabotaging it. [laughs]
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What made Matt Peters and Katie Rice the right directors to bring this film to life?
Matt’s a huge DC fan. He loves DC like I love DC. With Katie, her boarding and directing has a charm to it. Every time I see her name on a project, it’s something that I remember liking. She’s a veteran. She’s been in the industry for a long time, and when I heard she was available, I was like, “Oh yeah, get her! We need her!”
I think we worked really well together with the humor. Matt’s great at humor, and did a lot of the DC LEGO movies with me. They hand off things to each other really well. I don’t even know how they divvied up the scenes together, but I can tell certain staging things were probably from Katie while certain action things were probably from Matt, but I’m just guessing. They work well together, and I know Matt really well because he co-directed my last DC Universe Animated Movie Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, so I knew he worked well with others. [laughs]
That’s key because there are no auteurs in TV production for animation. You have to be able to work with people, and he was great with that. I knew that they would make a great team, though I don’t know if they’ve actually met in person since we started this in lockdown. [laughs] You hire good people, and I was really lucky on this in that the crew that I had had worked on the second season [of DC Super Hero Girls]. They had an art director, and I had never had an art director before on any of my projects. I’m the art director. It was really nice having somebody making the creative choices that I agreed with. It was beautiful and a very pleasant experience to do this movie.
You’ve been working with DC properties since Superman: The Animated Series and gone as dark as Apokolips War and as wacky as Batman: The Brave and the Bold. How is it exploring this wide range of facets and directions with these characters?
For me, it’s perfect. I know other producers whose comfort zone is more in the middle. They don’t want to go too dark or light. I love going to the extremes to see how funny I can make stuff or how horrific I can make stuff. I would love to do a horror movie franchise. I’m scared of horror movies, but it’s different when you’re the one making it and in control. I also like adding a little seriousness to the humor, like with The Brave and the Bold. It was generally a comedic thing, but when the stakes needed to be real, they got real. With Apokolips War, I wanted to make sure there was plenty of humor in it to offset the horror of what was happening to some of the characters.
That balancing act is always something that’s appealed to me because I have no interest in doing something that is strictly downbeat, serious, and somber. That’s no fun. You’ve got to have something that appeals to the heart and humor in people because life is like that. Life can be volatile and funny, and sometimes it’s one right after the other.
How was it revisiting and continuing the world of Justice League Unlimited with J.M. DeMatteis on Justice League Infinity?
When we started it all, it was right at the early days of the pandemic and election, so I was super stressed out. They asked me if I would work on this project. Bruce Timm wasn’t on it, so I thought about who else worked on the show who’s great at making comics as well, and immediately I thought of J.M. Ethen Beavers worked on some comics and did some storyboards for us, and [I] figured if those guys are in, I’m in.
J.M. and I would have our calls to figure out what the issues were going to be, and that’d take maybe ten minutes, with the rest of the conversation, which went on for another hour, was about philosophical stuff. He was very much a calming influence on me during that really challenging time. The book is creatively rewarding because it feels like the show, and I think it satisfied fans of the show, yet moved the needle a little further than where we left it with certain plot points, but the experience of making it is what I’ll remember.
Directed by Matt Peters and Katie Rice, Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse will be released May 24 on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital HD.