Whether or not I'm a fan of CW's programming, I have to admit that Donald Faison's portrayal of Booster Gold on DC's Legends of Tomorrow season 7 finale has certainly raised the profile of the character and introduced him to a whole bunch of people who have never actually set their hands on a DC comic. That's an objectively good thing.

So it is a worthwhile experience to read how the show's executive producer Phil Klemmer finally got around to adding Booster to his long-running show.

Here he speaks to Chancellor Agard for ew.com:

EW: Arrowverse boss Greg Berlanti has reportedly been working on a Booster Gold movie for years. How did the character wind up on Legends?

Klemmer: As you might expect, through the side door you'd least expect it [to]. I just remember [co-showrunner Keto Shimizu] and I were on a call with Kim Roberto at DC, and we were just talking about fun characters. I think somebody threw it out there, of course never [imagining] in a million years would we get Booster Gold. And then it felt like 15 minutes later, DC called us back and was just like, "Hey, Booster's yours." And just you have a moment of being like, "Okay, this is clearly a prank of some sort, because..." We were all giddy and in disbelief and then it just became a quest of finding an actor who was worthy of the character.

EW: Why was Booster Gold on your mind to begin with? Were you just looking for a DC character to bring in at the end of the season? How did Booster end up fitting the needs of the story?

Klemmer: It's always the tonal fit and just knowing, I don't know, there's just something so lovable and unexpected. You just knew that he was going to work as kind of a bit of the merry prankster, a bit of a BS artist.

Klemmer was also quizzed by Joshua Lapin-Bertone at DCComics.com:

DC: How familiar were you with Booster before this?

Klemmer: I just knew about him from the early days of Legends, when I would hear of various projects, whether they were TV shows or movies, in the same halls where I was working. And obviously dealing with Rip Hunter in early seasons as well. I just assumed that he was going to have his own project. I never imagined that he would come into our world.

DC: For building this version of Booster, did you draw upon any particular stories? Or did you build him from the ground up?

Klemmer: The creation of a character really takes place over the course of that first season, and then seasons to come. It's going to really be a correspondence between us as writers and Donald as a performer. We definitely wanted someone who is a little off center, and like, a little bit mischievous. But we also just wanted a charisma bomb.

And we round out our media tour with Klemmer's conversation with Damian Holbrook of TVInsider.com:

TV: Is the plan to keep Donald on the board?

Klemmer: For sure. We're not gonna let Booster get away. I'm really excited to write him—he's the kind of character you wish you could be. You could get away with murder and be so charming that you never really have to suffer the consequences. He's the antithesis of a writer. Writers are deeply neurotic and self-loathing self-doubting, etcetera. I think that's why we writers are drawn to those characters—because those are our secret alter egos.

Season 8 has not yet been announced. Will there be another season of Legends of Tomorrow? If I were a betting man, I'd bet yes (especially if Michael "Booster" Carter is on the field). Legends of Tomorrow is one of the few CW shows that has improved its ratings season-over-season, so I think we should prepare to see more of Klemmer and Faison's Gold come fall.

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Early Saturday, Wired.com ran an article by Adam Rogers titled "The CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths Puts a Gen X Headlock on Superhero TV".

The article is mostly about the CW's upcoming crossover event between its DC-themed television shows, but as originally published, it contained the following passage:

Clearly superproducer Greg Berlanti and writer Marc Guggenheim, teenagers at the time Crisis came out, cared about all this. Their Arrowverse now occupies a significant number of hours on the CW's program grid, pulling stories from all across DC spacetime. And like our own universe, the wider Berlantiverse is expanding. Titans and Doom Patrol are on the streaming service DC Universe—based on DC books but, confusingly, outside Arrowverse continuity. Next year, TV will add Arrowverse shows with Superman, Stargirl, Booster Gold, and Green Lantern.

Did Wired break the news that Booster Gold is coming to the CW in 2020? Not so fast.

The article was later updated, changing the above to

Clearly superproducer Greg Berlanti and writer Marc Guggenheim, teenagers at the time Crisis came out, cared about all this. Their Arrowverse now occupies a significant number of hours on the CW's program grid, pulling stories from all across DC spacetime. And like our own universe, the wider Berlantiverse is expanding. Titans and Doom Patrol are on the streaming service DC Universe—based on DC books but, confusingly, outside Arrowverse continuity. Next year, TV will add Berlanti shows with Superman, Stargirl, and Green Lantern.

Hmm. Look who's missing from that revision.

The footnote for the article says it was "Updated to clarify that not all the upcoming DC comics-based shows will necessarily be Arrowverse shows." Which obliquely avoids saying anything about why references to Booster Gold were dropped.

So, is a Booster Gold television show coming or not?

I asked around to see if I could confirm any of this (as it relates to Booster) and was told not to trust any of it. Therefore, let's pretend none of this happened and just keep hoping for progress on the Booster Gold The Movie coming to HBO Max rumor that I rumormongered last month.

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I'm never one to spread rumors, but ever since news broke that Greg Berlanti and Zack Stentz were working on a Booster Gold movie, rumor is about all we've had to talk about.

The skinny from David James of WeGotThisCovered.com is that

"[S]ome upcoming DCEU movies may skip theaters and premiere on HBO Max. The big name we're hearing is that Booster Gold could be the first feature film release for the service."

In case you hadn't already heard, Warner Bros will jump into the greedy proprietary streaming service game in May 2020. The service will stream content from across Warner Bros properties, both pre-existing and newly created. Berlanti has already announced two DC-themed shows.

As a result of that announcement, it seems a safe bet that the days are numbered for Warner Bros' existing DC Universe streaming service. We already know that at least some of its content (specifically Doom Patrol) will be moving to HBO Max. Therefore, if a Booster Gold movie is ever going to happen, it seems logical to assume that will be showing up at HBO Max, too.

Of course, that's all speculation. Like I said: rumors are about all we have to talk about when it comes to Booster Gold: The Movie.

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Last weekend, CW president Mark Pedowitz spoke to reporters about his network's plans following the conclusion to Arrow at the end of the 2019-20 season, and he hinted that the replacement show is likely to also take place in the DC Comics-inspired "Arrowverse."

As the Hollywood Reporter reported, Pedowitz said

"There is another property we're looking at for the following season."

As you might expect, that vague tease has sent DC fandom into a bit of a tizzy as everyone developed their own pet theory for what he could have in mind and what they'd like to see. Sites like CinemaBlend.com and CBR have suggested a bunch of possibilities, from Nightwing to the JSA. One name that comes up pretty consistently is, as you might expect, Booster Gold.

Booster seems as good a guess as anything. Arrow executive producer/writer/director Greg Berlanti has tried in the past to get a Booster Gold project off the ground. Last we heard, Booster was still in the works as a movie project at Warner Bros, but who knows?

Maybe this is Booster's opportunity. Maybe it isn't. There are a bunch of deserving DC Comics properties that remain chronically underexposed to mainstream audiences. Who will the lucky winner be? Keep watching the CW to find out.

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Revenge Of The Fans plans to release a new Fanboy podcast today, and their guest will be screenwriter Zack Stentz. They asked Stentz about the state of his Booster Gold movie script:

I do not know what's going on with it right now, honestly. And I don't know if the DC people know what's going on with it. Their strategy seems to change depending on how [...] most recent movie did. But I can tell you that a script has been turned in that the director and producer, Greg Berlanti, has proclaimed himself to be very happy with. And it's something that's ready to go, but DC and Warner Bros. would need to give the greenlight to it. The ball is in their court.

We've been following the progress of Stentz's script since he took the job back in 2016. I'm glad to hear that his boss, Arrow and Flash producer Greg Berlanti, is happy with it. Maybe one day Warner Bros will be, too.

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