Seth Rogen knew he was stepping into a hornet’s nest. That is to say, Rogen – the star, co-producer and co-writer of the new film The Green Hornet – understood the burden in creating a new movie based on a character who had already inspired a long-running radio show, a film serial, several comic-book lines and a classic 1960s TV series starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee.

“The challenge was making sure that the movie satisfies a new audience who has never heard of The Green Hornet and, at the same time, includes all the stuff that Green Hornet fans like about Britt Reid and Kato and Black Beauty and all of that,” says Rogen, who is best known for The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Superbad (2007), Knocked Up (2007) and Pineapple Express (2008).

“And, most importantly, we had to include everything in such a way that it doesn’t feel like we’re including it for the sake of it, or just for the people who like The Green Hornet,” he says. “You see these adaptations and something happens for no reason, which makes you think, ‘Oh, that must be from the original. I must not get that, because it’s from the original’. We wanted to make sure nothing happened like that, that all these things seemed like they were born of this organic world we were creating.

“So we knew we had to include a gas gun,” Rogen says, “but the challenge is, ‘How do we include it in a way that seems totally organic to these characters, in this time period, that informs you of their emotional story and doesn’t just feel like some obligatory prop we’re trying to include?’

“We did that with everything,” he says. “Just the name, The Green Hornet – why is he called The Green Hornet? Something like that was a huge writing challenge, but it was also a lot of fun to come up with an organic way to explain why the (heck) I would ever call myself The Green Hornet.”

‘PEOPLE LIKE TO COMPLAIN’

The Green Hornet, which released this weekend, updates the old George Trendle/Fran Striker story, while retaining its basic structure: Britt Reid (Rogen) is the spoiled, irresponsible, hard-partying son of a wealthy newspaper publisher, James Reid (Tom Wilkinson). After his father is murdered, Reid runs the family business by day and by night protects the streets of Los Angeles as a masked hero who dubs himself The Green Hornet.

By his side are Kato (Jay Chou), a martial-arts master who was James Reid’s chauffeur and bodyguard, and Britt Reid’s smart, comely new secretary, Lenore (Cameron Diaz). Reid and Kato cruise in style, crisscrossing Los Angeles in Black Beauty, a 1966 Chrysler Imperial – a la the television series – that’s fully loaded with missiles, flame-throwers and pop-up machine guns. And the baddie is Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), a Russian kingpin determined to unite the city’s top criminals under his iron fist.

Speaking by telephone from his Los Angeles home, Rogen says that he, co-writer Evan Goldberg and director Michel Gondry pushed the envelope wherever possible. There’s action and comedy – many die-hard Green Hornet fans are nervous about the balance between the two – and, at least for the early part of the film, Reid is a self-interested jerk, a risky characterisation that goes against the grain of superhero movies, which usually depict good guys becoming better men or even enlightened.

“For me it was all about his journey,” Rogen says. “It’s far more interesting to watch a guy who you’d never think would become a superhero than a guy who you can picture becoming a superhero. That’s just about what Evan and I like out of a movie. I’d rather see a huge journey from a character than just a little one.”

Rogen can’t wait for The Green Hornet to open and for audiences to judge it for themselves, in part because he’s eager to dispel the bad buzz surrounding the production. The internet has been rife with complaints about Rogen being cast as the Hornet, about other casting issues – including the early exit of Nicolas Cage, originally cast as Chudnofsky – and about the comedy-heavy trailer, as well as the release delays to accommodate a 3-D conversion and so on.

And, pardon the pun, it has stung.

“People like to complain about stuff,” Rogen says, laughing. “I don’t get it. Those web pages, man, they just like to complain about stuff. It’s like tabloid journalism for nerds. One day In Touch weekly loves Jennifer Aniston, and the next day they hate her. One day the nerds hate The Green Hornet. When they come, they might love it. Who knows? I honestly think that 99 per cent of those web pages have no actual legitimacy to them in any way, shape or form.

“So I think that it would be silly of me to pay attention to that, just as it would be silly of Jennifer Aniston to pay attention to what (some magazine) is saying about her.”