Renaissance Men: David S. Goyer Introduces \'Da Vinci\'s Demons\' for Starz

October 12, 2012, 8:00 am

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Leonardo da Vinci may have created some of the most enduring works of art, invented forward-looking technology and made it cool to be a vegetarian, but has he ever starred in his own television show? That one missing entry on his extensive list of accomplishments is, after nearly 500 years, finally being filled in by “Da Vinci's Demons,” a new series that will make its debut on Starz next spring, with Tom Riley as a young, swashbuckling version of that Italian Renaissance polymath.

“Da Vinci's Demons” (produced in collaboration with BBC Worldwide) is a high-profile endeavor for Starz, which, on a roster that includes “Boss” and “Magic City,” could use an action series to replace  its depar ting hit “Spartacus.” It is also a substantial undertaking for its creator, David S. Goyer, who is directing and writing the show, and who has become increasingly known in the feature-film world for his work on comic-book adaptations like “Batman Begins” (which he wrote with the director Christopher Nolan), “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises” (for which he and Mr. Nolan provided the story) and the coming Superman reboot, “Man of Steel.”

Mr. Goyer, who will participate in a panel on “Da Vinci's Demons” at the New York Comic Con on Saturday, spoke recently to ArtsBeat about the series. In these excerpts from that conversation, he talks about historical and fantastical interpretations of Leonardo, and how the show is informed by his work with superheroes.

What drew you to the idea of an adventure series with Leonardo da Vinci?

I'd never done a historical project before. I'm interested in serialized television and I do believe international productions are the way of the future, so I was specifically interested in doing a show that would have global appeal. And da Vinci is one of the most well-known figures in history. It seemed like every week you'd turn the page and there's some new conspiracy or theory or controversy or hoax. To me, it doesn't even matter whether or not these things are true.  

Were you looking for someone who was the Batman or Superman of his day?

It wasn't by design, but I seem to have settled into a career where I adapt and rework and modernize these iconic figures. In that regard, da Vinci's not so dissimilar from a Batman or a Superman. I think there are remarkable parallels. For instance, the earliest biography of da Vinci was written by Vasari in “The Lives of Artists,” which was written maybe 50 years after da Vinci died. And even then, da Vinci's described as 6-foot-3, really good swordsman,  really good rider. It liter ally says in Vasari's biography that he could bend iron bars with his bare hands, which is of course ludicrous.

I'll draw another analogy â€" one of the things that really appealed to me about “Batman Begins” was that there was this huge gap in his origin story, even in a great work like Frank Miller's “Batman: Year One.” There was a seven-year gap between the time Bruce Wayne left Gotham and returned and started to become Batman. For a creator that's really exciting and there are similar gaps in Da Vinci's history. From about the time he was 27 or 28 to maybe 32, there are some records but they're wildly conflicting, and some of them, including letters written by Da Vinci himself, claim that he was in Syria, creating war machines for the Ottoman empire. No one knows to this day who his mother was. There are recent claims, based on analysis of fingerprints found on famous paintings,  that Da Vinci might have been half-Turkish or half-Arabic and his mother was a Turkish slave. That's really fascinating. I didn't make that up. That's the current theory.

Is that the period of his life that your show is set in?

Largely, although we do bop back and forth â€" sometimes it's a bit of a nonlinear structure. But the other gap that's really exciting for me is, they say that at the time of his death there were 13,000 notebook pages that he created, and within a year of his death, 7,000 of those pages went missing and have never been found. To date there's about 6,000 notebook pages that we know exist and in those pages we know he created the submarine and the tank and the machine-gun and the diving suit. Today I was at the British Museum and  I was staring one of the pages where he had the designs for his tank, with his signature on them. That was a crazy experience.

Is there any possibility that he might have been a member of the League of Shadows?

[laughs] Largely because of “The Da Vinci Code,” but also becau se of other works, da Vinci's sort of synonymous with secret society and puzzles. In the case of my show, I've chosen to involve him in a real mystery called the Sons of Mithras. People claim that Plato and Aristotle and Socrates were all members of this mystery cult,  a secret order that wanted to preserve and disseminate knowledge.  That's the secret society that I chose to involve him in, because I figured any club that had Socrates and Plato and Aristotle in it was probably good enough for da Vinci.

How do you take all this and turn it into the basis for a 21st-century TV show?

You have to have a core thesis for a show, something that a modern audience can relate to. The first thing I did was read the translations of all his journal pages. The thing that I hit on was this struggle for information â€" who controls information. That's something that was very much happening at the time that da Vinci lived, and it's happening now. By da Vinci's lifetime, Gutenb erg had invented the printing press, and prior to that, the only people who had access to books were kings and popes, and the great masses were largely illiterate. To have a book was to control information. Once the printing press started, that information started to be more widely disseminated. About the time our first season takes place, Pope Sixtus â€" not coincidentally â€" started the secret archives. By its very definition, it's supposed to hoard information and keep it secret from the masses. That's a really relevant theme for today's audience. It's happening in the headlines right now.

On “Da Vinci's Demons” you're alone atop the creative pyramid. How is the experience different when you've collaborated with Christopher Nolan?

In the case of the films I've done with Chris, “Batman Begins” I wrote with him, and then with “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” his brother Jonah also came in. There was kind of this church-state separa tion in that Chris and I would work on the initial treatment alone, then Jonah did a draft alone, and then Chris revised it alone. Because Chris was the one piece of continuity all the way through, the end film almost completely resembles the  treatment that Chris and I wrote at the beginning. The Batman movies very much resemble the stories that I wanted to tell, so I'm really fortunate â€" that's not always the case when you work with a director and a writer. In the case of Superman I was the only writer on it. Chris and I worked on the story, but I was the only screenwriter, so [the] movie is word for word what I wrote.

 

Is it safe for say on “Man of Steel,” that you've put a lot of thought into why things in the world of that film are the way they are, and why events would turn out in certain ways?

That's also something that I picked up, very much, from Chris, that he's really ingrained me, this meticulous attention to detail. Obviously, it's a m ake-believe story, but within the realm of possibility, to constantly go over it with a fine-toothed comb and keep asking yourself, if this really happened, how would people react? It's exhausting now, being on the other end of it with “Da Vinci,” because I'm the creator of the show and the head writer and the head director, and no detail is too small.

Now that more people are starting to recognize your name from projects like “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Man of Steel,” do you feel like you have more on the line with “Da Vinci's Demons”?

It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand it's flattering. On the other hand, once your name is attached to the trailer, as mine has been, then your reputation is on the line and it's nerve-wracking. Whether it's a TV show or a video game or a movie, I want it to have integrity. So that issue is taken up at all hours, whether it be, is that sound cue good enough? Is that font right? Anything.

You just want to be remembered as the da Vinci of your day, that's all.

[laughs] Well, that's a little presumptuous.