Producer Donald De Line recently spoke with the Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog about the rush to get one of this summer’s biggest blockbusters done in time for its release date on June 17.

According to THR, De Line sat in the audience for the Green Lantern movie panel last Friday at WonderCon as 9 minutes of footage from the film was premiered for eager fans. Afterwards he was happy with the response. “This was important because when we went to Comic-Con last summer, we were still shooting. We didn’t have any shots or any visual effects to show,” said De Line, “This was very important because we finally had something to put in front of people. We showed people what we have finished with visual effects, though only 80 percent was technically finished. Some of it is still work-in-progress.”

Though the audience got a lot of footage, the completion of the film is still a ways away. “We’ve had a very tight post- production schedule. We have over 1500 visual effects shots in this movie, which is a lot,” said De Line. “And we have to convert to 3D. That pushes your schedule up even tighter so they can go through this painstaking conversion process. You want to do it with the right quality so you need a lot of lead time. Those things conspired to make what seemed like a decent amount of post feel like incredibly pressured.”

De Line said their visual effects houses are working non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week but that he’s excited about what they have to offer. “You have this superhero genre and you get to take it into space, go to the center of the universe where you have all these alien cultures represented. You get the best of superhero-meets-space opera, in a way. And you get to bring both of those elements together and it’s the kind of thing that I think that makes it different,” he said. “In a world that is becoming increasingly populated with superhero movies, and everyone is going “Gosh, there’s a lot this summer” and “Is there room for all of us?” we all can say we offer something different. Thor stands on his own with one kind of world, we are an entirely different world. And Captain America is another kind of world. So I say were all very distinct.”

Don’t expect this film to connect with Zack Snyder’s Superman project or the future Justice League film. De Line said, “We didn’t do that but there some little references to what could be outcroppings from the Green Lantern Corps, because as you know, the Green Lantern Corps went on to become a lot of different offshoots and have different aspects. And we’re already working on a sequel script so we have a cool story idea that we think will go in a direction they don’t expect.”

The producer also mentioned it was “fantastic” working with DC and their Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns. “We would say, ‘We want to do this, does this cross a line for you, is it true to the piece?’ And he was our bellwether. He knew we had to be creative and go in certain ways, things would work in a movie but may not work in a comic book, and he would help to think of new ways.”

De Line said besides finishing all the massive special effects, they begin scoring the film this Thursday with James Newton Howard. The next official Green Lantern trailer will show before Thor in theaters on May 6.

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