Supergirl Producers and Star Say They’re “Making a Movie a Week”

Supergirl starts with a bang. In the pilot episode, Kara “Danvers” Zor-el goes from “I need to keep my powers hidden” to full-on Superhero working with a crazy alien-hunting government agency in 44 minutes that feel closer to 44 seconds. That kind of pace is what showrunners Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti, and Ali Adler are hoping to maintain for the entire season, though, much as they do on Kreisberg and Berlanti’s other superhero shows.

“We are intending to keep up that pace,” Kreisberg told ComicBook.com in a recent interview. “We sort of don’t know any other way to do it! We’ve often talked about, with the TV landscape, and honestly the feature landscape, too: at any given moment there’s a feature film on The Avengers or The Dark Knight or Man of Steel or Iron Man or Thor, and you can get your kicks from this stuff anywhere. So we really have to provide something special and singular every single week to keep people entertained. So we think of this as trying to produce a Supergirl movie every single week.”

“This is not relaxed girl, it’s Supergirl,” Adler cut in with a laugh.

“We just have to figure out a way to do it and not kill Melissa,” Kreisberg joked.

As for Melissa Benoist, the star of the show, she’s in “basically every scene” as the show’s ensemble cast rotates around interactions with her.

“That’s the difficulty is that you’re making a movie a week, which it really feels like we are,” Benoist told us. “Just the sheer amount that we have to do, and not just me, it’s the crew behind us and the other actors, we are working non-stop and pretty tirelessly.”

The everyday approach, then, is that “Kara and Supergirl are enjoying themselves, and finding joy in being a hero and using her powers after keeping them hidden for so long,” Benoist said. “I always keep in mind her bravery, her positivity, and her hope,” something she hopes will inspire young girls.

Indeed, Greg Berlanti said that “having worked with her for a couple of months now, if anyone has little girls out there, we all want them to grow up to be like Melissa Benoist. So in some ways, and I mean this seriously, as we’ve moved ahead in writing Kara, we’ve tried to capture what’s so special about Melissa.”

Supergirl kicks off on CBS at 8pm ET/PT on Monday, October 26, 2015.