An interesting situation popped up recently thanks to a comment made by one of the showrunner’s of The CW’s Arrow. The DC TV show started off hot with fans, but has become more polarizing as the series has gone on. Well, one of the show’s creators, Marc Guggenheim, ignited an interesting little controversy during an exchange with a fan on his tumblr account.

The way it went down was…

A fan wrote to Guggenheim to inform him of an open letter written by another fan, demanding for Geoff Johns to take the reins of Arrow in order to “save” it. Guggenheim responded by saying:

“Thank you.  I appreciate that.  I’m sure Geoff and a whole mess of other people have lobbied to remove me from the show.  I think they overestimate their influence.”

That sounds pretty tense, eh? It sure seems like Guggenheim just accused DC Co-President Johns of trying to remove him from Arrow, and then followed it up by saying that Johns- and others whohave tried- overestimate their influence. Shots fired!! Right?

Wrong.

According to Guggenheim, he made an unfortunate mistake with that remark. He says he left out a crucial word, and that word fixes everything about it. What’s the word, you ask? “Been.” So let’s go ahead and fix his response so that it includes that missing quotient:

“Thank you.  I appreciate that.  I’m sure Geoff and a whole mess of other people have been lobbied to remove me from the show.  I think they overestimate their influence.”

With that clarification, it indicates that he’s stating that Johns and the powers-that-be have been lobbied by fans to get him fired, but that those fans overestimate their power.

Here’s Guggenheim’s full explanation, which he sent to Bleeding Cool, about this whole Arrow mess:

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Obviously, this is a typo on my part.  There’s a word missing from my reply.  I meant to write ‘I’m sure Geoff and a whole mess of other people have BEEN lobbied to remove me from the show.’ ‘Been’ as in Geoff et al. are the ones being lobbied — per the post I was responding to — not doing the lobbying.  Equally obviously, Geoff is the Chief Creative Officer at DC Entertainment.  He doesn’t need to lobby when he could just make a phone call.  And since we’re dealing with something appearing on the Internet — which isn’t reactionary at all (he said sarcastically) — I’ll throw in one more “obviously” for good measure:  If Geoff, who is not only a creative partner but also a good friend, was actually in favor of me losing my job at Arrow, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to confirm that publicly.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify this.”

So that’s that. We can put this little controversy to bed now. It’s been fun.

SOURCE: Bleeding Cool