Marc Madison sent this in.
As Lucha Undergound’s Executive Producer, Eric Van Wagenen recently took some time out of his schedule to participate in an interview with Marc Madison of TheRichest.com. Van Wagenen discusses the upcoming season of Lucha Underground, the potential development of a streaming service, how the concept for the show initially came about and what fans can anticipate with upcoming storylines moving into the new season. Check out excerpts of the interview below and the complete interview here.
On how the creation of the show came about
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.
On potential storylines that could be carried on:
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.