Arrowverse Producer Greg Berlanti to Receive Emmys Governors Award

The TV icon will be honored at next month's Primetime Emmys.

By Jenna Anderson

Greg Berlanti has had nothing short of a prolific career in the entertainment industry, executive producing a record-breaking number of television shows across networks and genres. Berlanti's career has spanned everything from Dawson's Creek to Riverdale to You to The CW's Arrowverse of DC shows — and now, it looks like he will be honored in a prestigious way. On Thursday, it was announced that Berlanti will be the latest recipient of the Governors Award at the 76th Emmy Awards, which will be held on Sunday, September 15th in Los Angeles. The Governors Award recognizes figures or organizations that have "made a profound, transformational and long-lasting contribution to the arts and/or science of television."

"Greg is an extraordinary creator, who consistently delivers characters and stories that are in dialogue with the real world," TV Academy chair Cris Abrego said in a statement. "From the beginning of his career, his commitment to representing three-dimensional LGBTQ+ characters in particular has paved the way for greater cultural understanding and acceptance of a community that is often under attack in both social and political discourse. For seizing the power of television to move our culture forward, the Academy is honored to select Greg Berlanti for this year's Governors Award."

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Will Greg Berlanti Return to DC?

At the moment, Berlanti Productions is only attached to a single DC television show, the forthcoming final season of The CW's Superman & Lois. In a recent interview with Deadline, Berlanti reflected on the grand experiment that the Arrowverse became, while acknowledging that the larger DC franchise is now in great hands with DC Studios' James Gunn and Peter Safran. 

"It was a moment in time for me, and one plan, the size and the scope of which we were altogether able to achieve," Berlanti explained. "The closeness that I had with many of the actors, and still have, and other writers and directors and the family that we built over that time. And the opportunity where every year we were doing these big crossover episodes and all the different showrunners would come in from all the different shows. To create in that way was such a joy and incredibly challenging. But it is nothing I would try and replicate again at this moment. That felt very singular. I love Warner Bros. I wish them all the best with these amazing characters. We had a credo that I would say to everybody all the time, which is, we're so lucky to have these characters. Let's return them to the shelf more valuable than when we took them off. It was very much about that, and trying to build a world and a place where everybody who loved them as much as we did could come and tell stories. Now I think it's time for new; the torch has been passed beautifully, and I'm really excited by all they're doing there now."

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