David S. Goyer goes from comics to history books with ‘Da Vinci’s Demons’

TORONTO – Even David S. Goyer thought there had been some mistake.

Goyer, a self-professed comic book fanatic, made a name for himself penning scripts for blockbuster superhero screen epics such as Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, the “Blade” series and the Superman movie reboot “Man of Steel.” He’s written the story for the highly anticipated DC Comics feature “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and has two Justice League features in the works.

So the 49-year-old Michigan-native was surprised when BBC Worldwide approached him to do a TV series about Leonardo da Vinci.

“I said, ‘No offense, BBC, but I’m not the guy to do ye old historical drama,'” Goyer said several months ago in Toronto. “They said, ‘That’s okay — we want you to do the “Batman Begins” version.'”

That is exactly what they got. “Da Vinci’s Demons” stars Tom Riley as a young, swashbuckling Da Vinci, more dashing and daring than the traditional portrait of the artist and inventor as an old man. The third and final 10-episode season premieres Saturday on Super Channel.

“I started calling it a historical fantasy fairly early on because I’m taking quite a few liberties with history,” says Goyer. “One of the catchphrases of the first season is, ‘History’s a lie,’ which I often believe — history is written by the winners.”

Still, Goyer spent several months boning up on da Vinci and the Renaissance before penning the pilot. He learned, among other things, that the first half of da Vinci’s famous notebook pages went missing within a year of his death at 67 in 1519.

“All of the things we know he invented, like a machine gun and various flying machines, they existed in the half of the notebook,” he says. “It’s reasonable to assume there are other inventions we don’t know about.”

Plus, says Goyer, people were mythologizing da Vinci even in his time — including the man himself. A biography of da Vinci published 50 years after his death claimed he wrestled bears and could bend steel in his bare hands. “I doubt that was real,” says Goyer.

The series shows da Vinci trying to stay one step ahead of the warring Medici and Pazzi families as well as the Catholic Church. He also becomes involved with a cult known as Sons of Mithras.

Goyer admits that by season 3, the series goes all “Game of Thrones.” Da Vinci’s world basically comes crashing down with the Ottoman invasion.

“There are more visual effects in the first two episodes than there were in the whole of last season,” he says, promising, “lots of battles, lots of mayhem.” There’ll be guest stars, too, including Hugh Bonneville from “Downton Abbey.”

“He was buck naked in one of the first scenes,” says Goyer. “He was game for it. We were fans of ‘Downton Abbey’ and he was game to do something completely different.”

The series is shot in a converted auto plant in Wales, taking full advantage of the rugged countryside and occasional castle. It joins “Game of Thrones,” “Vikings,” “Penny Dreadful” and “Outlander” as costume epics shot in Northern Ireland and the U.K.

Goyer says that with “bigger budgets, you’re having to do these foreign co-productions. You’re piecing your budgets together from these different parties.”

With satellite networks penetrating the world, producers and broadcasters are also looking for projects that have global reach. That’s one reason historical dramas are all the rage, says Goyer.

“It’s harder to do a story that just takes place in Baltimore and have that appeal to people in Indonesia. Doing historical just translates more easily.”

The recent international TV marketplace at MIPCOM in Cannes saw an explosion of new historical/fantasy fare, including a miniseries based on “War & Peace,” the “Thrones”-like epic “The Shannara Chronicles,” “Dickensian” (a mash-up placing several of Dicken’s favourite characters in the same Victorian neighbourhood) and “Houdini & Doyle,” a shot-in-London mystery/drama executive produced by Canadian-born “House” creator David Shore and brought to you by the folks behind “Murdoch Mysteries.”

“Binge viewing has changed viewing habits,” says Goyer, further explaining the tilt towards historically placed literary drama. “People are taking a much more novelistic approach to television.”

— Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.