Can Warner Bros. just put out a normal DC superhero movie?
The company that invented superhero movies is struggling to finish Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
Aux News Warner Bros
It turns out that sunsetting a cinematic universe isn’t as easy as it sounds. Now spanning three Warner Bros. regimes, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom is currently underwater as the production just wrapped an unprecedented third round of reshoots, writes The Hollywood Reporter. The final film in the Snyderverse, set to dive into theaters in December 2023, is the latest headache for James Gunn, Peter Safran, and David Zaslav, who have spent the last year attempting to smother and reboot the DC universe quietly. It’s not going well.
Director James Wan has dealt with a multiverse of mandates, release dates, and buyouts in the time since his first Aquaman became an unlikely billion-dollar grosser in 2018. Since the summer of 2022, though, the Aquaman sequel underwent two rounds of reshoots and held several dismal test screenings. During that time, the jockeying of Aquaman’s all-important Batman cameo was also in the air. Former DC Films president Walter Hamada originally wanted Michael Keaton’s Batman to serve as a Nick Fury-esque link between movies. This is why Keaton appeared in The Flash, the now-canceled and unfinished Batgirl, and was pegged for Aquaman 2. However, because of Aquaman’s release date shuffle (the movie was supposed to open in March 2023), Keaton’s schedule couldn’t allot time for the film. So they brought in one of their many other Batmen, Ben Affleck, to fill in. When Aquaman jumped to December 2023, it screwed up Affleck’s appearance in The Flash because all these movies interlock and have to follow a strict timeline. As it stands, though, neither Affleck nor Keaton appears in the movie because Gunn and Safran “do not want to promise a movie universe that will not come to fruition, nor tie it down excessively to past failures,” writes The Hollywood Reporter. Considering the previous paragraph, we have to say that this is probably the right choice.
Apparently, the movie is “back on track,” with Wan recently completing five days of reshoots in four days. But, of course, this latest report is a far cry from what Wan said in June.
“I’ve had to make adjustments all along the way. The DCU has been through lots of different versions, and one of the things that was challenging about this film was keeping track of what’s going on,” Wan told The Hollywood Reporter in June. “Fortunately, the Aquaman universe is pretty far removed from the rest of the world. We’re going to many different underwater kingdoms that are not necessarily related to what’s happening with the other movies and characters, so we’re stand-alone in that respect. So I can just tell my story on its own without being affected too much, but at the same time, I have to be mindful of what’s been happening.”
However, like all DC movies, this one costs a fortune, with a reported budget of $205 million. Not to mention the tidal wave of projects going in and out of the few visual effects houses not being pilloried by Marvel’s pixel-obsessed requests.
There was a time when Warner Bros. and DC were the only ones making superhero movies. The success of Richard Donner’s Superman and Tim Burton’s Batman made mincemeat of Marvel, which spent the ’90s floundering in bankruptcy, even as sequels to Superman and Batman proved difficult. After Fox released X-Men in 2000, the landscape changed. DC responded with its bold Dark Knight trilogy, staving off the MCU until 2012 when The Avengers announced a new game in town. The next decade saw DC trying to differentiate itself through the darker-than-dark Zack Snyder films and their spin-offs. Movies like Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice made money but were critically reviled and alienating to all but the most loyal Snyder fans.
Now, as Warner Bros. attempts to distance itself from the last decade of movies it made, the studio is finding it difficult to finish its leftovers. Through their many Infinite Crisises, DC Comics were much better at rebooting and transitioning to a new story arc than the DC movies. As Warner Bros. moves from AT&T to the Zaslav era, the leftover Snyderverse movies released in the transition—Black Adam, Shazam: Fury Of The Gods, and The Flash—have been one fiasco after the next. What once seemed like a sure bet, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom isn’t making it any easier.
93 Comments
If the strike goes on, could they be forced to release Batgirl after all, just to have something in theaters?It says it’s unfinished here, but I thought it was finished.
Apparently it was still in post-production and needed SFX work and some reshoots. So not finished, but almost.
If it need reshoots, it’s in the same boat as everything else.If it’s post production, maybe not.
Principal photography was finished. Post-production wasn’t. It’s still in the same boat regardless, because Zaslav thought it needed reshoots before bumping it up from direct-to-streaming to full theatrical release.
they legally can’t release it because of the tax break they took. it is destroyed and gone.it’s possible there’s some renegade version on a hard drive somewhere, but warner bros can’t make money off it.
You really think they erased the whole thing?How do you know the tax break actually took place yet?
Hard to know the specifics, but if they wanted to claim it as a loss, they’d have to actually destroy it. A similar thing happened in the 1930s with a film Charlie Chaplin produced called A Woman of the Sea. For a variety of reasons he never released it, and when he subsequently claimed it as a loss on his taxes, he had to destroy the film negative in front of witnesses. So long as the film exists, it is not a loss because it exists, and has the value of what was put into it.
No way, they didn’t completely destroy a $90M investment or tax-writeoff. Zaslav is a sociopath and a putz, but he’s not that good of a CEO.It’s definitely somewhere, the only catch is that it’s with people who could be identified if the movie ever got leaked like Wolverine Origins.
i mean, ceo’s are pretty malicious and he seems…quite malicious.i wanna see batgirl as much as the next guy and i concede that (unless they fully erased it, which i believe they did) there are ways they could release it, but i really, really, really don’t think we’re ever getting it.
“How do you know the tax break actually took place yet?”
BECAUSE IT HAPPENED A YEAR AGO IN THE LAST TAX CYCLE.
Jesus, put down the retard sandwiches, ok?
i do think they erased the whole thing, and we are currently in the new fiscal year.i don’t have, like, proof or anything obviously but they can’t release it, based on the terms.
They can’t and don’t just erase a movie they already spent millions filming just because they decide not to release it. That’s just not how it works. They would get sued for doing that by all parties involved alone. Not to mention the negative backlash they’ll face for that which can sink their stock price and scare investors. No, it’ll just sit in their archives/vault like a lot of their unreleased stuff until they ever decide to ever release it someday. Like others here have said, what’s keeping them from completing and releasing it now is that they would lose a ton of money doing so, especially with all of the tax stuff and everything and that’s something they can’t risk doing right now.
well we’ll just have to agree to disagree. i was led to believe the terms of the tax break meant destroying the content, so i’m going by that. they said they held a few on-the-lot screenings of what was completed and then deleted it. i don’t find that particularly unbelievable. i also don’t think that unreleased scooby doo movie is sitting anywhere.i also don’t understand what anyone could sue for.it’s kind of moot either way, because as you said, if a copy exists they’d have to eat the 90 million they got back from taxes, and spend whatever else on cgi and marketing, and oh yeah the actors are on strike so they can’t promote it.either way we’re reaching the same conclusion – shit isn’t coming out.
It’s not a matter of “agreeing to disagree” what is not correct. According to the director, they were blocked from accessing the footage from the studio. And they blocked it so that they can’t sell/give the footage to another company or keep filming it on their own. The footage was never deleted. That was a rumor started up by random blogs. Again, studios never would just straight up delete a movie forever that was already filmed. The term for it is literally called “shelving.” And yes, there are tons of unfinished/canceled projects going back decades sitting around in their vaults. Sometimes, they do actually and eventually release it to the public. And yes, lawsuits for this very reason. If they had actually straight up deleted the film without the director, actors, and etc. knowing and without giving a good and legit reason, then that would technically be violating the contracts, agreements, and warranties that they signed.
nah it’s about agreeing to disagree. you don’t know their contracts any better than i do, and it’s a weird streaming release contract for a service that doesn’t even exist anymore. i see your points and i’ll happily eat my words if i see anything come out, but i firmly believe that shit is gone gone.
I actually do know the contracts because I used to work in the business. And it’s not a weird streaming contract. Shit gets canned and shelved all the time and can at the studio’s discretion and that’s really all this was when it came down to it. And there are clauses in the contract that cover this when it happens. The director was actually wrong to think the footage was his when signed it away. All this stuff I’ve been saying is easily Googleable too, especially the part where the movie is “gone” and deleted is not true, but you seem to want to believe in whatever even if it isn’t true and unsubstantiated. A definite “my ignorance is better than your knowledge and experience.”
I mean, they could release it, they’d just have to pay some taxes they wouldn’t otherwise have to. It’s not, like, a violation of the laws of physics.
Considering WB Discovery’s financial situation – the very thing that led them to writing off Batgirl in the first place – kinda’ suggests they don’t have the cash to undo whatever tax shenanigans they have to do plus pay to complete the movie.
Oh for sure, I’m not saying it would be a sensible or plausible thing for them to do, just that it’s something they chose to do and could un-choose it if they wanted.
If it was canceled this year (I can’t remember) then they havent filed taxes yet and haven’t taken the tax break.Even if it was last year, I bet they could just pay the back taxes, maybe with a penalty. They wouldn’t like that, but they don’t like not having product either.
I really hate these comments because this is absolutely 100% not true. Literally it takes one form and a check to the IRS to reverse that tax break. It means the studio will have to lose some money but if they got absolutely nothing to release, they may consider it
i mean, look i’m just going by what i read and multiple sources said they had to destroy the footage, including the directors of the movie.i also just don’t think they’re gonna release the movie either way!
they had to destroy the footage, including the directors of the movie.Wow, they had to destroy the directors too???Hollywood is even more cutthroat than I thought.
I don’t know how many people would go see a movie the studio thought was so bad they shelved it for tax purposes. Like I’d watch it on streaming out of morbid curiosity, but not go to the theater.
I doubt the movie’s quality had anything to do with the decision to shelve it. These people released Suicide Squad and Justice League.Supposedly, the reason it got canned was because its budget was too small (around $90 million) and Zas was worried viewers wouldn’t be impressed with anything that wasn’t expensive on the level of a Marvel film, which sounds like a remarkably stupid line of thinking now that the crazy-expensive Flash has gone down as the biggest bomb in WB’s 100 year history.
Yeah you and Bob Sacamano make a good point there!I recall reading there was also a concern that the costumes looked like they belonged on a CW show and not what people expected from a movie.
Perhaps they did, but the CW DC shows are objectively much more successful than the movies are, and it’s funny to me that everyone in charge at WB seems to look down on them.
I mean, it’s DC, have you seen the movies that the studio released that they thought were good?
Or for that matter Salem’s Lot, which has had its release date pushed back three times, and apart from one screening of a teaser reel at a comic con, they’ve not released a single clip or publicity still.
FOR FUCK’S SAKE, THEY WROTE IT OFF AND IT WILL NEVER GET A LEGIT RELEASE.
The possibility raised by the title went out the window the moment Zach Snyder was first hired to make their superhero films.
It’s not like Christopher Nolan made 3 “normal” superhero movies when he did his Batman trilogy.
Comparing Batman to every other DC superhero (outside of more obscure characters like the original Sandman and The Question) is apples and oranges? You can do darker, more grounded takes on Batman because the comic is rooted in the pulp-era of comic books. For the first couple of years of his existence, Batman was as much a crime/detective comic as it was a superhero title.
I am of the belief that it is WAY harder to do a good Superman than it is to do a good Batman, just because of who Batman is. Batman is fucked in the head; the only differences we see in different interpretations is how fucked in the head he is. He has plenty of tech but no superpowers, so it’s easy to challenge him (dramatically speaking).Superman on the other hand isn’t fucked in the head, and he’s massively overpowered. It’s hard to challenge him, and too often scriptwriters take the easy way out (throw another Kryptonian or three at him, or take away his powers). How Gunn handles Superman: Legacy will be very telling.
To which I say, what exactly is normal? The standards and expectations of the genre like everything seems to shift over time. What audiences want and expect evolves.
I mean, those Nolan movies had zero scenes where a superhero’s beloved father criticizes that hero for saving children instead of watching them drown. So I do think they were closer to normal.
slow down, minor key acoustic cover of previously upbeat pop song plays
I wasn’t aware Snyder made Shazam, Birds of Prey, Suicide Squad, Black Adam or The Flash.
Makes sense. While I never drank the Kool-Aid everyone I know is bending over and taking it up the ass and solely out of sheet laziness because while there’s not much to watch there these days god forbid people spend five minutes looking at the competition and switching…
It’s not sheet laziness, I just think my bedding can wait a couple days to be washed.
I’ve always been a sheet-motivated person. A real go-getter of sheets
But to be frank if you’re doing a lot of taking it up the ass, probably best to change them more often than not.
I thought they wrapped it up with Black Panther 2 and that Namor Character.
The success of Richard Donner’s Superman and Tim Burton’s Batman made mincemeat of Marvel, which spent the ’90s floundering in bankruptcyThis is the first time I’ve heard the argument that Marvel’s woes were due to DC’s movie successes.I was under the impression that they had gotten themselves in trouble all on their own, during the early 1990s comic boom and mid-1990s comic bust that followed.
Yea the phrasing like “DC responded with Th Dark Knight Trilogy’ implies the comic book company made those movies. It didn’t.
I read that more as those movies making mincemeat of Marvel at the box office / in general terms of quality, rather than them being responsible for Marvel’s misfortunes.(Though that said I’m not sure whether that interpretation works either, since I don’t seem to recall any Marvel movies being in the works around the time of Donner’s Superman or Burton’s Batman, except maybe the cheap Captain America TV movies or whatever.)
“I read that more as those movies making mincemeat of Marvel at the box office”
How do you make mincemeat out of something that literally didn’t exist?
I was under the impression that they had gotten themselves in trouble all on their own, during the early 1990s comic boom and mid-1990s comic bust that followed. To say nothing of the fact that they parceled out their catalogue to low budget studios and/or larger studios that failed. Spider-Man was in development Hell for nearly a decade (possibly more, can’t recall). The movies weren’t as much of a focus.Ironically, WB was an early adopter of the “comics as content generation” philosophy. They simply could not get out of their own way, and any successes outside of the animation division were focus grouped to death. They spent too much time trying to give audiences what WB thought they wanted, and were dogshit at reading the room.Fast forward to today, and DC’s hitting the reset button (again) while Marvel is about a decade away from the MCU becoming THE dominant universe. The source material is being fit to serve the MCU more and more blatantly.
I think it is a general comparison of the competing publisher’s success at the box office, just very clumsily stated.
“I think it is a general comparison of the competing publisher’s success at the box office, just very clumsily stated.”
There. Were. No. Marvel. Movies.
Yeah, none of that is right, and conflates movies and comics.
However, like all DC movies, this one costs a fortuneNot Blue Beetle.
Inflation must be worse than I thought if $120,000,000 USD isn’t a fortune these days!
Compared to other superhero movies?
“Compared to other superhero movies?”
*sigh* It’s not a relative term, moron. A fortune is a fortune, no matter how much the next door neighbor’s movie costs.
God, you’re fucking stupid.
That’s pretty much the norm for a AAA movie.
Still renting an apartment, I see 😉
“After Fox released X-Men in 2000, the landscape changed. DC responded with its bold Dark Knight trilogy, staving off the MCU until 2012 when The Avengers”We only ignore Spider-Man 3 in these parts. Leaving Raimi’s trilogy out of this paragraph may incur the curse of evil Toby on your life.
I can’t wait for the Synderverse to be dead. Wasn’t a fan at all. Though I think James Gunn’s DCU is going to fail as well. And the whole half ass reboot is dumb. Just start all over. The movie universes of DC keep failing again and again. While the DCAU and the Arrowverse did pretty well despite some misses here and there. They did better than any of the movie universes. That’s for sure
I appreciate that the DC movies are at least wild risks, not just basically the same movie 12 different times like the MCU
That’s the problem: the average comic book fan wants the exact same thing as what Marvel puts out. To them, Marvel is a standard that all others must attain; something new and different is scary.
‘”I appreciate that the DC movies are at least wild risks, not just basically the same movie 12 different times like the MCU”’I would not say Shang Chi and the Ten Rings was like all the other MCU movies. In fact with this statement I question whether or not you’ve watched a single one. They actually aren’t all the same. I wouldn’t even compare any of them with The Eternals.
They’re shit though.What’s the point in spending all that money on shitty movies.
It’s not like they were trying to make them bad
Yep. It’s extremely uncommon for anyone to try to make a bad movie; even Neil Breen makes what he truly and genuinely feels are good films and I don’t give a shit what Tommy Wiseau says, The Room was an earnest attempt to do that, too.The only cases I can think of where people actively try to make a bad movie are when they try to capitalize on the surprise success of a previous bad movie, a la Samurai Cop 2. And even then they’re trying to make a “so bad it’s good” movie even though it’s rarely successful at that and ends up being “just plain bad.”
Counterpoint: The Asylum.
Just repeatedly making them bad. Corporate leadership is a joke in almost all scenarios, but way more so in creative industries. The least qualified to create people end up calling the shots, repeatedly contradicting their reputed superior business skills by screwing up every movie with shitty, day-one mistakes.
After the first few it sure felt like they were
I’d be forgiving if they any of the risks paid off: high risk, high reward, but there hasn’t been any reward; even their very best (Wonder Woman) was just… fine, and most were real stinkers that completely misunderstood the characters.
The MCU was risky when it started, beginning with the decision to try a connected universe to begin with. Most of their movies featured characters that weren’t as widely recognizable as Superman or Batman and some were characters that few knew like the GotG or Ant-Man.And most of the non-Synder DCEU stuff plays out just like MCU movies do. I did like The Batman a lot of the movies that have come out lately.
MCU moves are at least internally consistent and watchable. On the occasion that I was a DC movie, ten minutes in I remember, “Oh right, these are really bad.” Like, unnecessarily bad. The lighting is bad. The cinematography is bad. The script is bad. The acting is all over the place. The movies are never sure what they’re supposed to be doing. They are, for the most part, genuinely bad movies with a few good scenes.
Dude, Zack Snyder isn’t going to fuck you.
“Not to mention the tidal wave of projects going in and out of the few visual effects houses not being pilloried by Marvel’s pixel-obsessed requests.”I think you meant pillaged? “Pilloried” means to be publicly shamed. Did you mean to say that that Marvel’s pixel-obsessed requests publicly shamed the visual effects houses? I mean, it’s an awkward sentence no matter what you slot in there, so I honestly don’t know what you were going for.
Hah, I was thinking the same, but didn’t want to be petty.The correct word there would be something like “bombarded.”
I honestly think they were looking for a fancy way of saying “piled-upon.” 🙁
lol I actually had to follow the link to see what they meant. I was like surely Marvel isn’t actually “pillorying” these effects teams? That wouldn’t make sense…?
I feel bad for Michael Keaton. Of the three new DC projects he filmed on, just one ended up getting released.
On the other hand, he got paid something like 10 to 20 years worth of my income (and NSW Health/the private sector pay me very well for what I do) just for a few weeks at most work on Batgirl alone.
Batgirl, Flash… what’s the third one?
“Batgirl, Flash… what’s the third one?”
Read this very article that you’re commenting on, moron.
aquaman 2, as mentioned in this very article.
I hope it turns out well, I really like the first one.$200 million isn’t that much though – you couldn’t get a crappy He-Man movie for that!
“the studio is finding it difficult to finish its leftovers”Why not just stop. Just chalk those ones up and move on? Asking serious here—is that an option? Do they have to deal with the leftovers at all? Can they not just start the whole thing from scratch?
Aquaman was a hit, wasn’t it? The CEO level likely want a sequel for a movie that went well in the box office. It’s a money decision, no doubt.
Yeah that is what it sounds like from the article, true. Well good luck to them. I wonder if Amber Heard’s involvement was a part of the problem as well. I’m sure all the press around the trial also made it hard for them to publicize…
“I’m sure all the press around the trial also made it hard for them to publicize…”
To publicize a movie that’s nearly six months out?
this one feels like it should have been easy. A new threat emerges that challenges all the undersea kingdoms; since the kingdoms can’t agree on whom to send, Aquaman has to lead a fellowship of the ring style team to defeat the threat, with half the challenge being keeping the fractious coalition together, Arther’s fish-out-of-water antics playing well with some members and not so much with others. Feels like good soapy drama and comedic potential there.I especially looked forward to the scene where the trench critter they’ve kept kinda chained up as an in-case-of-emergency weapon is the only one to escape imprisonment, and then subsequently gets its own Wolverine-vs the Hellfire club goons “now its my turn” badass action scenes and rescues the others.
“After Fox released X-Men in 2000, the landscape changed.”Why do people always forget about Blade(1998)?
If “normal” means “safe” counter argument: can Marvel/Disney not release a normal superhero film for once?
This seems like a classic case of throwing good money after bad. These close out DCEU movies have all been flopping, it seems to makes no sense to reshoot Aquaman 2 even if the movie is complete trash because it’s likely doomed either way.
Not their fault I guess – I’m more of a Marvel fan – but to me DC movies are just not very memorable. I’m not sure why – there are some really great DC characters. I’m hoping Gunn will get things right in the next few yeasrs.
As long as their is on Octopus playing the drums, I am down to watch it
Maybe two or three years from now we will view this as the end of the reign of comic book movies and the rise of general IP films. It had to end sometime. That doesn’t mean superheroes will go away or that good or even great superhero films won’t be made but it’s clear a certain kind of era is over. Barbie and much lower-profile nostalgia IP projects (Blackberry, Beanie Babies, Tetris, Air Jordans, Hot Wheels, etc.) are likely to ascend. But even Mattel probably cannot bank on a decade-plus of cinematic universe success. I think that’s just out of reach these days. Plus, companies and execs don’t tend to last long enough anymore to make them happen. Each new leader wants to reshuffle the status quo, making it impossible to span years in any coherent way.