Leslie Iwerks on Superpowered and Lessons From DC Comics: You Just Have to Keep Tryin

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After watching the Disney+ docuseries “The Imagineering Story” in 2019, Warner Bros. executives approached Leslie Iwerks about documenting their studio’s history.

“They said, ‘We’d like you to tell honest stories about us,” recalls the Oscar-nominated director, granddaughter of Mickey Mouse designer Ub Iwerks.

Three years later, Iwerks has two docs out about Warner Bros.: The first, “100 Years of Warner Bros.,” which pays homage to the output of the studio over the past century,  debuted on Max in May, the same month that the series premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The director’s sophomore documentary for Warner Bros. Discovery, “Superpowered: The DC Story,” arrives July 20 on Max. The three-part series, which Iwerks co-directed with Mark A. Catalena, is a deep dive into the history and legacy of DC Comics, home to superheroes including Batman and Superman. The series also details the rivalry between DC and Marvel.

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Narrated by Rosario Dawson, the docuseries features more than 60 new and archival interviews with industry creators, actors, and executives, including Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton, Henry Cavill, Kaley Cuoco, Gal Gadot, Patty Jenkins, Michael Keaton, Regina King, Margot Robbie and Zack Snyder.

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Variety spoke to Iwerks ahead of “Superpowered’s” debut.

DC Comics will turn 90 next year. How did you approach turning that history into a three-hour series?

The first task was to team up with (co-director) Mark Catalina, who I worked closely with on “The Imagineering Story.” He grew up in the comic-book world and has five to six thousand comics. Together we started boarding out exactly what the story was. We knew that it was going to be a three-hour show, so we figured out where the turning points were and then what characters to follow.  Then we determined what the dramas and challenges of the artists were and what the challenges were for the company itself. So, we were left with a multi-layered story of business and culture. We were really looking at how these stories could and did reflect what was going on in the world around them.

Why did Warner Bros. Discovery want to tell the story of DC now?

I think they thought, “Hey, we have a brand here that hasn’t really been dealt the same treatment as Disney Imagineers. We can really do a deep dive into the DC history in a way we haven’t done before.”

You made a movie about a company owned by Warner Bros. Discovery that they commissioned. Was that difficult at all when it came time to tell the stories of the company’s failures or its ongoing rivalry with Marvel?

It’s stronger and smarter for any company to be honest and transparent about their failures, their foibles, their mistakes, and their high points. I have to give DC and Jim Lee a lot of credit. The whole team was like, “You guys got this. You tell the story of DC the way you see it.”

Not surprisingly, you go into detail about DC characters like Batman and Superman, but there is no mention of some less successful characters like the Green Latern. How did you determine what to give time and what to ignore?

We ultimately didn’t feel like some characters were that critical or that successful enough to address. But we did focus on films that were hits as well as films that weren’t. You have The Flash,” which just came out, and unfortunately, that didn’t do as well as I think everybody had hoped. But those kinds of things happen all the time. I think the key message to the story of DC is that you just have to keep trying as an artist. You have to keep throwing things on the wall, and if it fails and falls to the floor, so be it. Just keep going. It’s the perseverance story that I think is the most important one in this series.

What’s the biggest difference between a DC character and a Marvel character?

There is a lot of blending in formats and styles, and visual effects. DC created the multiverse – parallel worlds. And then Marvel came in and kind of did the same thing. So the blending of the styles and the formats makes you go, what’s what? So, now I feel like you have to just know the character identity and say, that’s a Marvel character, and that’s a DC character.

What was the biggest challenge when making this doc?

To make sure that non comic-book people would be interested in this subject.

How did you overcome that?

This is a personal story about DC. It’s told from the inside out, and I think it’s really the story of the artists themselves and the impact that the art had on the artist who ultimately created these characters and took the baton to the next level. This series is a fresh take on DC with a lot of emotion, which I think will appeal to comic-book fans and non comic-book fans.

What do you think audiences will be most surprised by after watching the series?

Seeing how these comics really reflect the times through marginalized characters. You forget that all of these characters and these stories reflect humanity and culture.

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