TheRichest.com recently interviewed Lucha Underground Executive Producer Eric Van Wagenen. Below are some highlights.
Wagenen on how Lucha Underground started: “I got a call from the Mark Burnett development team and they had said that they were in discussions with the El Rey Network on creating an updated, more US friendly version of Lucha Libre. My experiences had really been in reality television, but I have crossed over into the wrestling world with the Stone Cold Steve Austin version of Tough Enough, I also produced Legend’s House for the WWE Network. I had done a lot of sort of fighting combat shows like The Contender and Bully Beatdown. So within the Mark Burnett family of shows, I’m kind of the guy they call on when they need a show where people are fighting for better or for worse. I have that little niche covered, but we never really ventured into putting on our own promotion.
“My job initially for the first several months was to really pull everything and everyone together on the same page and to try to get everyone to share the same vision. It was really hard at first, it took several months and it took several episodes of taping before we all started to see what was working. But the original concept came from the El Rey Network, one of the original shows that they wanted to develop was a Lucha Libre product that was a little more updated and made for second and maybe third generation Mexican Americans.”
His thoughts on potential storylines that could continue: “I think one of the more interesting ones that I think will be what will happen with the Dragon Azteca character and with the Dragon Azteca mask. Who will carry the mantle? one of the legendary myths that we play with is the idea of the seven Aztec tribes. Clearly one of those tribes is Dragon Azteca tribe and will they now seek revenge with Dario Cueto and Black Lotus? That obviously comes to mind. Mil Muertes and Catrina taking over the temple and possessing all of the original Aztec gold is obviously a major storyline. Dario Cueto on the run and what that means for the temple and his future makes for a great storyline. Obviously everyone’s favorite Pentagon Jr. who has been unleashed and on the loose and how we handle that – especially with his relationship with Vampiro. That is definitely something that a lot of people are going to want to know and we’ll be addressing that in the early episodes as well. We’ll eventually get around to answering all the questions we posed in Ultima Lucha some might have to wait a few weeks before we get to them but it won’t be in a way that is predictable. I’ll just say that. (chuckles) We are very unafraid to try things. We got away with a lot in season one but we have a lot of good will with our fanbase. We’re hoping that our fans will trust us enough to grow and build and resolve in least predictable way as possible.”
Wagenen on how the show could develop over season two: “I actually didn’t think we would be so far into the sci-fi realm at this point. I think originally both Chris DeJoseph and I were wanting to be very cautious of how we start to roll out the more supernatural elements of our characters and our storylines. We wanted it to be user-friendly and familiar at first. We knew we were pushing things with the style of vignettes that we were shooting and that would take an adjustment period. So, we didn’t want to lead with a bunch of crazy stuff right off the bat. We wanted to slowly build and dole that stuff out slowly and gauge the audiences’ reaction. Now we have embraced the full theatre of it. I think that that was the biggest shift and risk that we took and it was definitely kind of something that we were nervous about, but we were very pleased with the level to which our fans accepted it. They loved the fact that we weren’t trying to copy the paradigm that the WWE presents or that TNA presents. We were trying to do something that was out there and a little bit fantastic and not so grounded in reality and the response has been great.”
