Interview: Author and Creator Morgan Rosenblum Talks All Things Treadwater

The graphic novel Treadwater has bloomed into something creator Morgan Rosenblum describes as a ‘transmedia franchise’. Recently, we had a chance to talk to Morgan about Treadwater while he was promoting the franchise at Toronto’s Fan Expo.

Could you tell me a little bit about your background?

Ok. My name is Morgan Rosenblum, born and raised in Manhattan, New York. I’ve always been a creative person my entire life. I wound up kind of veering off course a little bit in terms of being creative, I got into sales and marketing for a little while, I went to school for advertising and marketing, and then about three years ago I just decided that I’m not really happy with the direction of my career. It’s not that I wasn’t making decent money but I just wasn’t inspired to get up every morning so I thought about what the most important thing in the world was to me and that was happiness. People spend the majority of their lives either sleeping or working so if I view happiness as the most important thing I better be happy with what I’m working on.

So with that sort of philosophical outlook I sort of decided to just go for it and literally just up and quit my job and started pursing this thing full time. Actually, in all fairness I had already started working on it on the side and then it started picking up a bit of steam to the point that it literally consumed me and I couldn’t really focus on the other stuff I was supposed to be doing so I needed to try and do this full time and give it a real go.

I had already written a script or a pilot at that time and then decided I was going to find an artist that I felt fit the feel and the mood of what it was I was going for and then have at least a piece of it converted into a graphic novel. I got addicted to it and just went forward with the whole graphic novel, I put all the money that I saved up, like my 401K which was supposed to go towards starting a family and a down payment on an apartment, into the business to try and get it going and that’s when Treadwater was spawned. As I was creating the graphic novel and had a couple of test prints made, the quality looked really good, I showed it to family and friends and they commented that it was way better than they were expecting it to be.

When did Treadwater become something more than just a graphic novel?

My brother Owen and my partner Nat have a digital media studio where they do video production and work with actors and special effects, and they were like wouldn’t it be cool if we could convert the graphic novel into a motion comic? So we called in some favors and were able to get that going and it was relatively affordable and it looked awesome. We showed that to a small collection of people that weren’t necessarily all friends and family and they thought it was really cool, so then we thought wouldn’t it be cool if we cast some live actors and did some promotional stuff, film some select scenes, do some cool posters because the ultimate goal for me anyway was to at some point bring it to television. TV is my favorite medium simply because your canvas is much bigger and you don’t have to condense and entire character and story arc into a two hour movie. You can build those characters and especially because we have so many characters that are so complex, we wanted to be able to grow them and tell their stories. I keep saying we and by that I mean I started this myself but once I got my brother and Nat involved they just sort of became my co-creators. They took my basic story premise and really drew it out and added a whole other element to it, really made it resonate and put the characters in a whole other realm.

So fast forward three years later, we now have the term transmedia franchise. What that means is we have a story and have now converted that story or told that story in as many mediums as possible, all obviously connecting to one another, around the same characters, around the same story arc. If you think about The Walking Dead or Transformers, those began as graphic novels and what are they now? They are transmedia, they are video games, toys, interactive series and that’s really what we’re trying to do.

Where did the idea for Treadwater come from?

Actually it’s funny, when I was younger we had created this thing called Army Elite, which you may hear about ten years from now and it was supposed to be like way in the future with this genetic testing with the world in disarray and chaos. As I got older, I wanted to try and stay away from the super powers, the genetic testing and make something a little more plausible and real so we backtracked and we created the prequel to that series and that ended up becoming Treadwater. The challenge of that was we wanted something that felt real, that felt like a plausible future but we didn’t want to jump fifty or a hundred years in the future, we wanted to do fifteen years from now, which was much more challenging than I anticipated because I can’t throw hover boards out there two years from now, all the buildings won’t be replaced, you’re not going to have flying cars, it will be realistic with smartphones, holograms, things like that. The technology is really what’s going to change and then on top of that, how do we create a realistic geo political situation that a mature audience good really see happening fifteen years from now.

So to answer your question, where did the idea for Treadwater come from, I’m influenced by so many different things and when I watch a show or read a graphic novel or a comic book, I’ll take a character that I like I’ll think on how I can incorporate something similar into my story but keep it original. Being able to market what you have in your story and condense it down, I’m still struggling with that as you can probably tell! (Laughs)

How did Chad Coleman become involved with Treadwater?

This is the funniest and coolest story ever! My brother is was at a restaurant on a blind date and he was talking to her about TV and his favorite shows and of course he brings up The Walking Dead. He excuses himself, goes to the washroom and when he comes back he says to his date ‘Oh my god, Chad Coleman from The Walking Dead is sitting at the table right next to us!’ So my brother gets up and goes over to talk to Chad and he’s very polite, very eloquent to him, he tells Chad what a big fan of his work he is, including the humanitarian work he does in the community, and of course the show itself and what he loves so much about it. Chad said ‘Wow, you nailed it. That’s what I love about the show. What do you do?’ So Owen told him about the transmedia franchise that began as a graphic novel and how we want to bring it to TV, Chad said ‘this sounds awesome, give me your phone.’ So he put in his phone number and email into Owen’s phone and said let’s set up a meeting. Fast forward several meetings later, meetings and phone calls, he is now our business partner and just the coolest guy, really awesome to work with, has been fantastic for marketing and getting the word out there and now we’ve based a character off of him as well.

Where is Treadwater at now in terms of getting on TV?

Just to be completely clear, we’ve written a television pilot and it’s supposed to be a dark show so we’re aiming at a cable network such as Netflix, HBO, Showtime, Starz, AMC, something that allows us to stay true to the dark nature of the show. Nat and I are just finishing up the series bible, which maps out the whole five seasons. We have our contacts set up, we’re ready to begin our pitch but when it’s time for the pitch we want to make sure all of our materials are fully ready. We’ve been growing a fan base quite rapidly and getting the word out there, we made best seller for indie titles in the first month of release so hopefully when we pitch to a studio we can lead with that. We just got picked up by West Aurora High School in Illinois and they are now teaching Treadwater in their sci fi literature class! We were at a convention and this really cool guy came over and wanted to hear about Treadwater and we walked him through the story and he bought a graphic novel, comes back the next day and asks what would we think about teaching it in his class? So we just closed that deal and we’re donating the books to them and they’re going to be teaching it to two hundred and fifty new students each year and that’s just awesome for us.

What is the best way for fans to find more information about Treadwater?

I would say treadwater.tv is the best way to go about it. We are very big about the whol   e experience and are very active on social media, so @treadwater, Instagram, Facebook and we’re always doing free giveaways so the more engaged you are with us on social media the more likely it is we’ll through you some free prizes. Checking us out on your computer versus mobile also allows you a more fun and interactive experience as well.