Chris Black (‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ showrunner): ‘This isn’t a show about monsters, it’s a show about people’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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“We’ve been working on this project for a long time,” reveals Chris Black, the showrunner/executive producer of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” on Apple TV+. This highly anticipated television series in the MonsterVerse franchise has been “a lot of effort,” he tells us, with “a lot of people pouring their talent and passion into something, and now we’re getting it out here for people to see, so we’re really excited.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Other than his past collaboration with composer Leopold Ross, most of the behind-the-scenes talents on “Monarch” are new to Black’s world. “Part of the fun of a project like this is being introduced to new talented people that you haven’t worked with before,” he begins, “and having our team at the studio, at Legendary, at Apple bringing people into my circle.”
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Black adds, “We just had an amazing team. It all worked out. I was just dazzled on a daily basis. The stuff that they would show us and have us listen to was incredible. Part of why you do this job is the joy of working with a core group of other insanely talented and creative people. It makes it fun and it ups your game.”
As for what makes “Monarch” unique in the television world, the producer explains, “We have the history and the legacy of Godzilla. We have a franchise that goes back to the Toho Studios features back to the 1950s. It’s one of the longest running, most beloved and successful film franchises in history. I think there are 30-some-odd movies over 70 years. So for us it was an incredible honor to be able to come and play in that sandbox and play with those toys and be invited to the cool kids’ party.”
Black continues on, “What we feel we did get to do was tell the story from a different perspective about this family. As we would like to say when we were developing it, this isn’t a show about monsters, it’s a show about people who happen to live in a world where monsters are real.”
Looking back on his own childhood, the showrunner recalls, “I don’t know that I was afraid of Godzilla. In the early movies, I don’t think he started out as friendly, but he became such an important and beloved character. He started out as a monster and evolved into a protector. It wasn’t so much fear as it was fascination with this character, that you could imagine yourself being in a world where Godzilla would be there to defend the world against other creatures.”
Black loves that audiences so far have been “surprised” by what they’ve seen. He readily admits, “To me, that’s the greatest thing you can get in anything. I think there is an expectation that, with the long history of Godzilla, people think they know what it is. And what we hope is that when people watch it, they’ll go, oh, this is about the legacy of a family and the burden that parents visit upon their children and determining your own destiny. And is what has been visited upon you a legacy or a curse?”
Black recently joined his fellow collaborators — casting director Ronna Kress, visual effects supervisor Sean Konrad, sound designer Ben Cook and composer Leopold Ross — at the DGA Theatre in Hollywood for a roundtable panel moderated by Gold Derby’s Chris Beachum. “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” premieres on Apple TV+ on November 17 with two episodes. New episodes follow weekly until January 12, 2024.
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