Writer Tim Sheridan breaks down the DC Showcase short The Losers, his connection with the war genre, and hopes for the future of the characters.

Take a step back in time with DC for the latest collection of DC Showcase shorts including The Losers. The story revolves around the World War II military team ending up marooned on a mysterious island overrun with dinosaurs and a mysterious portal leading to an unknown dimension.

Along with The Losers, the new DC Showcase collection includes two other shorts that previously came packaged with DC Animated films - Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth! and Blue Beetle - and with a brand-new short film called Constantine - The House of Mystery.

Related: Milo Neuman Interview - DC Showcase: Blue Beetle & The Losers

In honor of the short's release, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with writer Tim Sheridan to discuss DC Showcase: The Losers, his own connections to the war genre and hopes for the team's future.

Screen Rant: Admittedly when I saw The Losers, all I could think of was the revitalized Vertigo team, I didn't realize it was going back to the original team. Was that something that you had a plan for when you came on or was that something that producers approached you with?

Tim Sheridan: The producers came to me and said we want to do The Losers. They came to me because I had something on them and they owed me one, no, I'm just kidding. [Laughs] They came to me because I had worked with the Simonsens on the Sgt. Rock short and had done a deep dive into DC war comics. Jim Krieg and I had talked about The Losers a lot, so when it came time to do it, when they said they wanted to do it, I said, "Here's what I would do."

So we ended up jumping in, originally when Jim and I sat down, I think we had enough for several movies of Losers material. Unfortunately, we knew we were only going to get to do a short, so a lot of stuff ended up on the cutting room floor as it were. But I think we ended up writing and creating something that, for us, felt like it could be the final mission for this great team in the DC canon, which a lot of people don't know about.

Like you said, people's familiarity is with the Vertigo rebranding of The Losers and the movie that they made and a lot of people don't realize that The Losers are this World War II team with this great hook and this really great backstory and had been a huge part of DC Comics. What's great about the Showcase is that we get to showcase and have a little fun with characters we might not normally get to see on screen.

What would you say then were some of the biggest creative challenges from you, from a writing perspective, trying to pare down all of these ideas that you came up with into a short, especially with a group of characters who some may not be as familiar with as others?

Tim Sheridan: The beauty of writing something that is in the war genre is that there are archetypes, there are characters that, even if you are didn't read war comics, you've probably seen some kind of war movie. There are very classic archetypes that make it very easy to to understand who characters are right away. I think about like Gunner and Sarge, right out the gate, you see those guys and you see them together and you understand what that dynamic is, the gruff, experienced, hard-nosed guy and then the wide-eyed fresh meat as it were unfortunately in this movie. [Laughs]

I will say that when you don't have characters that are immediately recognizable and understandable for the type of characters that they are, you have to take a little bit of real estate to explain in dialogue or in design to really get people to understand who these characters are right away. Because you only have 10 minutes or so to get into the plot and tell the story, so that's the biggest challenge when doing a short film, especially with characters that people are not really all that familiar with.

That's almost always the case with showcase shorts is to communicate very quickly who they are. The producers and the director decided — and I think it was great — to do an opening credits thing where we see each of the characters and we have this real action-packed dynamic and their name comes on screen. So it really introduces them right away and put you right in the middle of a big action beat where you can see these guys in action, on a P.T. boat doing their thing.

Those kinds of shortcuts you have to take to be able to get to the real story. Now, let me say, one of the greatest things about doing these shorts is it flexes muscles that you need as a writer when you are writing to longer feature films, because in the end, if you can communicate who a character is very quickly and economically right away, that's gonna serve you not just in a 10-minute movie, but in a two-hour movie as well. So it's a really great exercise.

Let me add one more thing, which sometimes we're sneaky about. We created an original character for this movie, Fan Long, a lot of people don't know when you start watching the movie that Fan Long means lethal dragon, which is kind of a little bit of a tip of where we're going with that character. So some people are watching that and they know what those names mean, they kind of see where we're going with that character. But otherwise, it becomes a twist and a surprise for everyone, so sometimes we like to have a little fun with it.

It's always difficult when you're introducing a new character, because they have the potential of being a red shirt on Star Trek where you meet that red shirt in the opening of the episode and everybody talks about them and talks to them, like they're the most important member of the crew of the Enterprise and you're like, "Wait a minute, I know where this is going. 'Oh, well, Mr. Johnson of engineering, you're the most important member of the crew,' like, 'Well, don't count on him being there for very long.' Or 'He's gonna turn on everybody, and we're gonna find out he's really a villain or something.'" So it's a tough tightrope walking that line, but I think the team did a great job of teasing what was going on with Agent Long.

I couldn't agree more. Since you do mention the war genre, did you have any major influences aside from the comics for your writing?

Tim Sheridan: I am not somebody who grew up on war genre stuff, I didn't grow up reading war comics, I came to them as an adult later on in life and one of the things that really surprised me isI just felt like they were going to be inaccessible to me, because I didn't grow up watching a lot of war movies. I saw all the ones that everyone classically sees, I think most people have seen Saving Private Ryan, there's no question that things like Saving Private Ryan and Platoon or Predator, these big movies that have this war component or this company of military and Army and Marines — Aliens I would say as well.

I'm a movie guy, so that's where a lot of influence comes from for me, so I don't know that I specifically sat down and thought about what I could see and pull from those things, but I do feel like those archetypes exist in our minds, in the zeitgeist in our collective consciousness, because of huge movies, and TV, things like Band of Brothers, these things that are everywhere and that we've seen or been exposed to in some way. Ultimately, that is going to influence me and my work, it's basic input-output, all that stuff comes in and something like The Losers comes out of it. But in the end, when I was working on this script and when we were working on it together, me and the producers, it really comes down to what can we do to make The Losers shine, because it is the DC Showcase.

You don't have to work too hard, because there is a great canon, there is a history, there is a lot of stuff on paper with these characters and we know all we need to do is look to all that great work that's been done by so many creators for so long and try as best we can to tell you an authentic story that showcases the characters. Then we've done our job and hopefully people will watch something like The Losers and think, "Oh yeah, maybe war movies are not really my thing. This version of it, what I'm seeing is a story that is also a sci-fi story, it's a horror movie, it has other genres all kind of melded together."

I think if people go back and read some of these great war comics from DC, they'll find that that's the case, more often than not, in these books. They're incredibly fun and accessible, even though they they are set during such an awful time period, but they tell these stories of camaraderie and brotherhood and friendship and family and, ultimately, isn't that what the best stories that we read about the Justice League are all about? I think when it comes down to character, that's what we're aiming for, that's what we want to see and that's what we gravitate to. I think whether we're doing with a Justice League or whether we're dealing with The losers, that's the kind of stuff that we get with these books.

The short has certainly sparked my interest in going back to the the older version of the team in the comics. With that said, a lot of the shorts in this specific showcase, including The Losers, did end on cliffhanger notes. You've been with the DC for some time now, so could you see this potentially leading to either another short or an actual animated movie in the future?

Tim Sheridan: I certainly could see it myself personally, but I have no connections [to make it happen]. [Laughs] Unfortunately, I am not in that room, so I don't know what the plans are or what they want to do. But as a fan, let me just say that watching these shorts, it does, like you said, make you wonder what the future could hold not just for new characters that we can showcase in an animation for the first time with these Showcase shorts, but also with these specific characters, like Blue Beetle and The Losers and certainly Constantine.

It makes you definitely consider the possibilities and let me tell you, as a fan, nothing gets me as excited as the possibility that we're going to take a character or characters that have been underserved on screen and be able to give them a little bit more of a spotlight in the future. Hopefully, if we do our job right, then the Showcase shorts can be a springboard for that.

More: Why There Was Never A Sequel To The Losers

DC Showcase: The Losers can be purchased with Constantine — The House of Mystery on Blu-ray and digital platforms now.

Grant Hermanns is a News Writer, Interviewer and Hiring Manager for Screen Rant, having joined the team in early 2021. Way back in 2015 while still in his college days, Grant got his start in the entertainment journalism industry with creator-friendly site Moviepilot until it shuttered nearly three years later. From there he joined the staff at ComingSoon.net and was its Associate Editor prior to coming over to Screen Rant. To say he's a lover of film and television would be an understatement and when he's not mass consuming either you can find him exploring the world of Dungeons & Dragons with friends or slowly making his way through his gaming backlog.