People want to get immersed and lost in a world. They want to lean in and figure it out, and that's true of both of these shows. You don't know quite what it is, and that's great.

We knew Terry Brooks' work, but we hadn't read the Shannara books. So, they sent us the book to read and we just loved the story and the characters. We thought it would make a very compelling season of television. We were like, "Someone is going to make this. Why don't we do it?"

There are a couple of specific things about the show [Into the Badlands]. We didn't want to do a contemporary show, which is always "Chinese cop comes to New York, teams up with racist cop, together they fight crime..."

Audiences are hungry for something different. With binge-watching, they're hungry for interesting content they haven't seen before, and they want to be entertained. A lot of shows are grim, murky and dark. We wanted to spin away from the obvious, the tropes, the cliches and what people are doing right now, and do something different.

It was very challenging in terms of making sure that everyone is distinct. Also, we wanted to have some Asian influences as well, so that it really is a mashup. We want evidence of our presence in this world, so you'll see there's an interest in technology, that there are not complex electronics. There's electricity in this world, but computers, circuits don't work.

Also, when we did "Smallville," we didn't have an opportunity to interact with people who watched the show. And see what they had to say and listen to criticism and listen to praise at the same time. So a lot of this is a new experience and it's very interesting and rewarding for us. I think we get honest feedback. You get hate. You get a lot of love as well. And I'm actually very curious what people think of the show. For us, it's been a passion project of ours, and an incredibly challenging show to make.

Another thing we wanted to do, a lot of shows or movies that are in the future or the post-apocalyptic are very bleached, desaturated desert environments and we wanted to do the opposite of that. There's always talk about Chernobyl and the world that environment has recovered has become this idyllic, bizarrely refuge for wildlife.