TV Blog: Producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar to leave "Smallville"

Smallville Executive Producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the duo that developed Smallville for television, announced Wednesday night that they'd be leaving the show following the end of the current season to focus their efforts on feature films. During an interview with Comics Continuum, Gough detailed further what lies ahead for the pair of producers, whose feature film credits include "Spider-Man 2" and "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor". ""We are currently working on Jungle Cruise for Disney, and producing a movie for them as well, which I can't talk about because there hasn't been an official announcement, but it starts shooting in May."

Smallville will continue for an eighth and probably final season on the CW next year, though now it is slated to continue without its original producers and two of its headlining stars, Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor) and Kristin Kreuk (Lana Lang). Kreuk is set to return in a limited number of episodes next year, but will no longer be credited as a member of the main cast. Earlier this week, current Smallville producer Brian Peterson had this to say about what's to come in Season Eight: "The things I think I can hint at are the Lois and Clark of it all," he said, referring to the 1990s Superman-themed series that ran on ABC. "It's really going to be a season about Lois [Erica Durance] and Clark [Tom Welling]." This is curious because the Lois/Clark romance is a subject that Gough and Millar had previously said they felt they should not touch on in Smallville because it was the realm of the Superman feature films.

Me personally, I'm very skeptical now about the final season, and a part of me wishes they would simply shut it down after this year. Smallville, it seems to me, was never intended to introduce audiences to Superman, only to the young Clark Kent, the teen would someday become Earth's greatest hero. It was not meant to show us Clark's falling in love with Lois Lane--Lois is his adult love, the love he comes to after MUCH more seasoning, world-traveling, and experiences. Lana Lang, meanwhile, is the love of his adolescence, the love he was meant to leave behind, but who had a hand in shaping his hopes and fears about relationships, and we've seen that relationship for the most part run its course. On a practical level, this show for so long has been built around the dramatic triangle of Clark, Lana, and Lex Luthor. Now two of those three pillars are being taken away, and those who put forth the original vision are now choosing to move on. The question in my mind now is will the show even resemble what it's been for the past seven seasons, or will it be "Lois and Clark ... with Chloe and Kara, too!" Will hardcore fans like myself end up disavowing this final season because it will be so different in tone and form?

Time will tell, as in all things.