David Greenwalt

Sarah Michelle Gellar isn’t the only high-profile “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” veteran making an appearance at Comic-Con International in San Diego this year. NBC will screen the pilot for “Grimm,” the network’s upcoming fantasy police procedural, at the pop-culture expo, and two of the series’ producers, Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt, who spent time toiling on “Buffy” and its spinoff, “Angel,” will participate in a Q&A session along with the show’s stars. The duo recently chatted with Hero Complex contributor Jevon Phillips about “Grimm,” which is described as a “modern retelling of the Grimms’ fairy tales, in a fractured kind of way.”

JP: Where did the idea for “Grimm” come from?

DG: Well, our hero has the ability to see the big bad wolf in the child molester, and the three little pigs in the greedy people. He has the ability to see what others can’t. Much of the idea came from Mr. Jim Kouf …

JK: It was both of our idea.

DG: OK, it was both of us. But there was an original idea by Todd Milliner just to do a modern Grimm story. And this is what we came up with.

JP: The current “Grimm” references a longer history/mythology that we’ll learn more about, right?

DG: In the pilot, it comes out that the original Brothers Grimm were actually profilers. And what they were writing was all true — but it was handed down in oral tradition to warn people of certain kinds of creatures who live among us. Our hero, Nick Burkhardt [David Giuntoli], is a distant relative of the Brothers Grimm, and in the pilot discovers that he has this ability to see these creatures within certain humans — particularly when they are emotionally aroused or angered or frightened. His aunt, Aunt Marie, arrives in town to tell him that he’s getting this power because she’s passing out of this world. It’s also scary and funny. It’s somewhere between “X-Files” and “Buffy.”

JK: Our series should be something like the Grimm’s fairy tales. You open the book and you get a fairy tale every night.

JP: Can you name a few of the cases that our hero might be covering?

DG: He might work on a big bad wolf case!

JK: He might work on a Cinderella-type case. We’re bringing the fairy tales into the modern world and turning them on their head. They’re not going to follow precisely the Grimm tale, but we will reference them in some way…

JP: Like girls disappearing wearing red sweatshirts?

DG: Precisely.

JP: Are there some good creatures that he’ll see too?

JK: Yes, some Grimm characters are good — they’re not all bad.

JP: So, you’re taking the show to Comic-Con International. Anything special planned?

DG: We’re going to show the whole pilot at Comic-Con then be on a panel with the actors to present it to what we hope will become rabid fans of ours. Neither one of us has ever been to Comic-Con and we’re both very excited. We’re dressing up as aging TV writers.

JK: They’ll never recognize us.