Verheiden Talks Teen Titans Movie

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The 'BSG' co-executive producer catches us up on all-things Season Four, the 'Teen Titans' film and more...

Writer / Producer Mark Verheiden is one of those fortunate individuals who has been able to make a living doing what he loves. His list of career accomplishments crosses most of today’s media landscape from feature films to series televison to comic books.

Starting off many years ago writing comics like The American and Alien Vs. Predator, through feature films like Time Cop, to producing episodes of the TV series Smallville, Verheiden has been a busy man. For the last several years, Verheiden has been even busier than usual, serving as Co-Executive Producer and writer on the critically-acclaimed series Battlestar Galactica -- which airs on the Sci-Fi Channel and has its Season Four premiere this Friday.

In addition to his producing and writing duties on Battlestar, Verheiden has also been hard at work adapting DC Comics' The Teen Titans for the big screen as well as one of his own comic book stories, Ark. Recently, ComicMix sat down with Verheiden to talk with him about the next season of Battlestar, his plans for Teen Titans, the writer’s strike, what makes a good story and much more.

COMICMIX: Mark, thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

MARK VERHEIDEN: Of course. Always a pleasure.

CMix: How are you doing these days?

MV: Good. Now that you’re recording, I’ll say nothing incriminating.

CMix: Okay... unless you want to say something incriminating...

MV: No, not me.

CMix: Okay, let’s get to it then. You’re back from the writer’s strike. Hard at work on BSG?

MV: Oh yes, we’re back and right into it again.

CMix: Did the strike have any effect on your plans for the show? Did you have time to think while you were off?

MV: I think that’s what it gave us, yeah. We were all together on the line. We didn't talk story much, but obviously the show was in the forefront of our minds -- where we’d left it, where we were going to pick it up and how we might move forward.

So, it was good to have that time. Well, I’m not saying the strike was good, but...

CMix: There were some good things about it, though?

MV: Ultimately, it was worth doing but I was happy when we went out and happy when we came back. During that time off, we had a chance to think through the stories we were doing right before the strike.

I don’t want to say we threw the baby out, but we were able to rethink it again and approach the episodes differently.

CMix: There's a baby?

MV: Yes, its Starbuck's. Just joking, of course. We were also able to watch the first episodes we had done before the strike. We had 11 done, and I count [th erecent made-for-television Battlestar film] Razor as the first two of those.

Its one thing to read scripts and look at story outlines but being able to watch the episodes in a row, see how they’re coming together, how character arcs are developing, that was a very useful experience for us.

It was a good way to get caught up -- even for those of us who obviously know the show very well.

CMix: Did you all get together at (Exec. Producer) Ron Moore’s house? Get some beers and pizza and watch the episodes?

MV: We did. It was fun.

CMix: Was there anything major that changed after watching the episodes?

MV: We didn’t really change that much overall. Although there was one episode in particular where we did make some changes.

Those were more to plot elements within that episode which didn’t affect the direction of the whole show. But no, otherwise we have it worked out until the very end and are sticking to our plan.

CMix: Does part of that plan still call for 22 episodes and then that’s it?

MV: Yes, the order was for 22 episodes and that includes the two for "Razor." So, I think the plan is to run 10 episodes, take a break and then run the last 10.

CMix: How long of a gap in between?

MV: You’ll have to ask Sci-Fi Channel about that one.

CMix: Hopefully it won’t be years.

MV: Yeah.

CMix: There’s also going to be a couple of “catch-you-u