Joe Barton is the writer behind hit series including “The Lazarus Project” and “Giri/Haji.” His latest project, Netflix’s “The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself” is an adaptation of Sally Green’s YA series about a young witch whose father is considered the most dangerous magical being on earth.
Ahead of the show’s launch on Oct. 28, Barton sat down with PvNew to discuss how he ended up working on the series, his upcoming “Cloverfield” sequel with J.J. Abrams and how he feels now about the axed Gotham City Police Department series he was set to make for Warner-Discovery.
How did you end up working on “The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself”?
It came to me years ago, in about 2015, something like that. I’d done a movie called “The Ritual” – or I was doing a movie called “The Ritual” at the time, I can’t remember – with [production company] The Imaginarium and they came to me and said they had this book they wanted to do as a film. We tried to do it as a movie originally, obviously we couldn’t get it made so I put it away for years.
How did it come back to you?
I’d done this TV show called “Giri/Haji,” which had just come out or was just about to come out, and The Imaginarium came back and were like, “Well, we think we can pitch [“The Bastard Son”] as a TV show.” And all they did was take the first 60 pages of the feature film script and just use that as episode one and took it out to pitch. So I [thought], “Well, if I don’t have to do anything.” To be honest, I didn’t think it would [get picked up]. I mean, most things don’t. You pitch so much, 90% of everything you try and get made doesn’t get made. So I was like, “Well, fuck it, why not?” And then Netflix bought it really, really quickly, a whole series order. So I was a bit like, “Oh, shit. We’re gonna have to make it then.”
Did you have to go and rewrite it quite a bit?
Yeah, I went back and rewrote it quite heavily. The film was broadly the same kind of story structure as the whole series, but obviously just hugely condensed. But yeah, we changed loads. At that point it was really just a way of getting the series greenlit.
Is there any talk of a second season?
As is always the way with these things, it’ll depend on how it does. It depends on the reaction and how many people watch it. Netflix have all sorts of unknowable algorithms that you have to hit to get a second series so I think it really depends on how it does on the service for them. I mean, we’ve planned a second series, there’s like, storylines and stuff so we’re good to go if they if they decide they want to do it.
You’re also working on a “Cloverfield” sequel. Are you writing it with JJ?
No, I’m writing it on my own, JJ is a producer on it. So I go away and do my drafts and then he gives notes and the Bad Robot execs give notes, and then he’ll jump in occasionally and look at drafts and stuff. I imagine probably the next one, because Babak Anvari just came on to direct so we’re getting closer to production. I’m doing some revisions at the moment and the hope would be that this would be the last sort of big script push, and then we get on to actually making it.
How does it feel going on to a project like that where there are such big expectations from fans?
I like it. I do quite like the pressure of it. And I like that there’s expectations. There are people that are excited for it and there’ll be people [who] I think will be slightly defensive, because there’s a definite quite hardcore fan base, particularly for the first movie. But it’s a bit like with “Bastard Son,” you know, that book has hardcore fans as well and people are slightly… they’re waiting for you to fuck up, I think, in a sense. I feel very positive about the creative [on the “Cloverfield” sequel], I think what we’re gonna do with it is going to be really good. If I didn’t think we had a good idea, I didn’t actually think it was gonna be good, then I’d be worried. But I am really excited about the potential for what we’re doing with “Cloverfield,” and particularly the story that we came up with. I don’t know, I just think that I would really like to watch it, I think it will be a good movie. People are waiting with different preconceptions or prejudices or whatever, but all you can do at the end of the day is try and make something that’s really good, and then give it to them and see.
You were working on a Gotham Police Department series, which was sadly scrapped. Seeing what they did with the “Batgirl” film, is there any part of you that’s glad you didn’t have to deal with the chaos that seems to be going on over at Warner and DC?
Like was it a bullet dodged? I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s difficult. I mean, it does seem pretty chaotic. But then it was pretty chaotic when I was doing my thing there so in a way, I didn’t get to avoid the chaos. I think we were slightly the first wave of that chaos. I think the [Discovery merger] happened about halfway through the process, which had already been really, really rocky. I think it would have been really great and that’s kind of why I feel gutted about it, just because I know we would have made a great show. And so that’ll always be for me a regret, because I just think it would have been really super cool. But it just wasn’t to be. And I do think probably the process of making it would have been challenging. If the development of it is anything to go by, the actual fucking making of it, I think would have been – yeah, fucking intense probably. So in that respect, I’m kind of glad. It was definitely stressful. It was a really stressful period and I was working on it for a year, but I was doing it at the same time as this [“The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself”], “The Lazarus Project” and a few others bits. It was slightly mad. But yeah, I guess I will always regret the show that we could have made, but I think I’ll probably live longer without the stress it would have caused.
Looking to the future, do you want to move into directing some day?
Yeah. I think I would only want to for certain things, like if something was really personal to me or I just felt like I had a take. I get frustrated, as I think all writers do, at certain times in the process when you have to hand [the movie] over to someone else. And I’ve been really lucky, I’ve worked with really lovely directors and people I really like and I like the collaboration. But yeah, there’s always that moment in every project where you’re just like, “Ah fuck I should have just directed it myself.” But then I see them getting up at like 5am every morning and getting home at midnight. The physical toll of production is insane. [So] sometimes I’m like, “Yeah, I want to direct” and other times that sounds like hell. I want to lie in and I don’t want to have to go to the fucking arse-end of nowhere to stand in a field all day. In TV, I think you can just be a writer and still be hugely creatively involved, particularly if you’re an exec producer, particularly these days, there’s a lot of power given to writers. I’ve learned in films, it’s less so. I think if I had a really personal story that was going to be a movie, I would not let someone else direct it at this point, just because I learned from experience that it’s such a degree of, you know, you have to step back creatively from it. So I think if it was a film, definitely. I’m talking like people would let me direct I don’t even know if they would. I mean, you know, I can ask.
