The Arrow/Flash Spinoff Is a Love Letter to Team-Up Movies Like Ocean's 11, Magnificent Seven

Very little is yet known about the upcoming spinoff of Arrow and The Flash on The CW.

There are a lot of questions, though, and with PaleyFest this week, the producers are starting to share some (very guarded) answers.

"For me, [the spinoff] honors all of the great team up movies, whether it's Ocean's Eleven or whether it's the superhero books," executive producer Greg Berlanti told EW. "That's what it's about. If you go back to the old westerns, there would be The Lone Gunman, but there would also be The Magnificent Seven. It's very much in the spirit of those kinds of movies and shows."

The lone gunmen, in this instance, being Arrow and The Flash, who will continue to headline their own series, even as just about everyone is assuming there will be periodic crossovers with the team-up.

Executive producer Andrew Kreisberg also talked to Green Arrow TV about the spinoff, dancing around the question of just how Sara Lance might play a role when she was dead the last time we saw her on Arrow. 

"I think by the Spring, you'll know," Kreisberg teased. "We want to keep some surprises going, but we're really excited about that series…. just to add another leg to the tripod, and complete it. We'll get to see some of the characters that we've seen and introduce a whole bunch of new characters, and show them all in a different way, and have the show really feel different. As different as Flash feels from Arrow,this new show will feel different from both of them."

That phrasing -- that it's the third leg of a tripod -- is interesting, suggesting perhaps that at least for now the CWverse is done expanding...but we'll see.

The Flash and Arrow return this week on Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.