How ‘Arrow’ saved CW, according to series EP Marc Guggenheim

Arrow was right on schedule and that’s a very good thing for anyone who has watched CW in the last decade or so.

The show had to “withstand the pressure of keeping the entire network on the air,” said Marc Guggenheim, co-creator and executive producer of the DC Comics superhero series, which ran for eight seasons from 2012 to 2020.

Peter Roth, chairman of Warner Bros. TV, “took us out to lunch and basically laid out in incredible detail the reality that if Arrow were not a success, there would be no more CW,” Guggenheim said in the Wednesday edition of The Showrunner Whisperer Podcasts.

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The DC Comics story follows rich, spoiled playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), who is lost at sea but returns determined to rid his city of crime. The series was so successful that the Arrowverse franchise developed around it, with series such as The Lightning And Supergirl.

Guggenheim does not believe that the dark, hard-hitting show would still be produced today because the network is producing fewer scripts.

“I don’t think we could have done it with the scope and creative freedom we had. It was a very special, unique time in the industry,” he said.

Guggenheim’s assessment of the current creative atmosphere at CW echoes the feelings of actor Jared Padalecki, who in June was split between shows like Gilmore Girls And Supernatural and regretted the cancellation of his last show, Walking aid.

“To my knowledge – and this is only what I have been told – (owner) Nexstar is going in a different direction with CW,” Padalecki said diversity“I mean, they have an hour Trivial Pursuit and one hour Scrabble coming soon.”

“They’re just changing the network,” he said, “where it won’t really be a television network anymore, but it’ll be more like, ‘Here’s something entertaining for an hour that you’ll never see again, but hopefully you’ll watch it. And it’s cheap!’ And I hate to say this, but I’m just being honest. I mean, screw it. They can’t fire me again.”

All eight seasons of Arrow are now available to stream on Netflix, along with several other former CW series, including Supernatural, The Lightning, Supergirl, Black LightningAnd DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.