Once I got his input I was going to go back to work on it, but then I found out that Universal had the rights to the character and my pitch reel went on the shelf. The rights went from Universal to Revolution. Gulliermo del Toro is very serious about bringing in an animated series. The movie is Gulliermo del Toro's Hellboy; he took the spirit of the comic and put it on the screen and changed it. It's very much an action thing, whereas the comic is mood and atmosphere. The movie is nonstop; in fact you definitely want to see it more than once just to take it all in.

Stones also feels that Hellboy series should be based closely on the artwork of creator Mike Mignola. © Sony Pictures 2004.

But Gulliermo feels very strongly as I do that the series should be Mike Mignola's Hellboy. When I did the pitch reel, I put Mike's name above the title, because you shouldn't really make any changes to it, except to flesh out the comic stories to last a half hours. That's the challenge and the fun, and then you would do original stories too.

JS: You may still get your shot at it if the movie really clicks.

TS: Well, Gulliermo is meeting with a Japanese studio in a week or two. He knows I'm interested. We've yet to have a serious meeting - we've chatted about it a little bit. I would love to be part of it, that's my current dream. I just want to make it clear that even though I've chatted with Gulliermo about it, working on that series is wishful thinking on my part. His feeling is American TV won't do it, so you produce it Japan and then bring it here. That way [Cartoon Network's] Adult Swim or an outlet like that can afford to buy a show that's already being made that they would never fund themselves. Because there's no point in putting it on Saturday morning, it wouldn't be Hellboy.

That's my dream project. If I can't do that then I'd love to have a project that in some way would make animation acceptable to adults but not necessarily just a comedy. There's plenty of projects I'm working on: finishing up a live-action fantasy script —

JS: Would you like to move into live action? A lot of animation directors have been making that move.

TS: It's almost more of a long-form writing sample to say I can write different things. When I started Brer Rabbit that slowed things down on my script obviously. It's hard to... I wrote a half-hour for Disney on assignment and that was easy. When somebody's counting on you and giving you a paycheck, you find the time, you bear down and you get it done. I finished that the weekend before I started here at Universal.

When you're working on your own project, you go home after a full day, and you think, "Oh yeah, I've got a couple of hours, I should get to work on that — Oh, look what's on TV!" It's hard to sink back down and get to where you were on the story, and think through enough to start typing again.

That script is one of the things that's in my way now, because as soon as I finish that I can go back to trying to create some original shows to pitch around town.

With the new The Batman series coming from Warner Bros., is it time for the return of Darkwing Duck?

What If?
JS: Do you ever feel like, "Oh gosh, I should have stayed in features, that's where the real prestige, the real action is?"

TS: That was a much more soul-searching question two years ago when there was still a Features division. You could say, "I wish I'd stayed in features and then gotten out in time."

I don't know, there was a period when every feature came out I got depressed. It felt like, "Man, they're changing so much, they're going into new ground" - and these are my friends who are doing this — `and creating an impact on popular culture.' But then, well what do you think television does? Especially now, fans of Darkwing Duck are in their twenties and coming into the industry, but they know the character.

I shrug. It's one of those things where the old Superman comic books used to have "imaginary stories." You'd get an alternate view of the universe: what if Superman did marry Lois Lane? You kind of want that, "Gee, what if I'd…." I do know that the television system fit my personality in that I loved new inspiration. The idea of doing one story for four years is still hard for me to get my head around.

JS: Which would've come with the territory.

TS: Exactly. When I started in features I wasn't aware of it then, but I really was moving from animation into story, then a chance to work at Imagineering, working in live-action and back to features. Then at TV where I stayed, my show changed every year and a half or so, and it consisted of a lot of different episodes. I really enjoyed the idea of waking up in the morning and saying, "I want to do a story about an invisible Eskimo; yeah, Darkwing fights the invisible Eskimo." You go to work, and lo and behold, you're spending a half a million dollars doing the story of the invisible Eskimo.