Actually, Dan Lin won’t be the “Kevin Feige” for Warner Bros. Discovery’s DC superhero movies
The studio's search for someone who can come in and fix everything will continue
Aux News Warner Bros.
As it stands now, Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav’s plan for the future of his new double-company involves two big pillars: Destroy HBO Max in a way that somehow makes money and revitalize the DC superhero movies so they’re at least a cohesive brand like Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (but, like, in a different way from what Zack Snyder was doing). Accomplishing the former means clicking on various movies and TV shows that are on HBO Max and dragging them into the recycling bin, and accomplishing the latter—apparently—means finding a Kevin Feige-type to run the DC movies. Well, that and permanently putting Batgirl on a shelf, jeopardizing the studio’s relationship with actors, creators, and fans… but in a way that somehow makes money.
We heard a few weeks ago that It, Sherlock Holmes, and The Lego Movie producer Dan Lin was Warner Bros. Discovery’s top choice for the Kevin Feige position (or “DC chief,” or whatever job title they’re going to use), but now Variety says that “sources familiar with the situation” have confirmed that Lin will not be taking the job. The report says that he wanted Warner Bros. Discovery to buy a stake in Rideback, his production company, and allow him to continue working there and Kevin Feige-ing the DC movies, but the two parties couldn’t agree to terms and they all “agreed to part ways.”
Variety says that WBD has “no immediate urgency to fill the job,” which seems uncharacteristically shortsighted for this company (that’s sarcasm, by the way), but there isn’t a ton going on with current DC movies at the moment anyway. Walter Hamada, the current head of the DC movies, will stick around until Black Adam comes out, at which point he will presumably march out of the Warner Bros. Discovery offices while flipping everybody off, and then Warner Bros. studio heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy will be in charge of the DC movies. They’ll oversee the release of the few movies still on the calendar, like the Shazam! and Aquaman sequels, plus whatever’s going to happen with The Flash and that Blue Beetle movie that is supposedly still happening.
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They’ll have to go with one of Zaslov’s other picks: Honey Boo-Boo, Joe Millionaire, or one of the drunker Deadliest Catch fishermen.
It’s Chip and Joanna all the way down.
I think Josh Duggar has a lot of free time on his hands these days
At this point I really don’t think any of those candidates could do a worse job.
I don’t understand why WB (under any ownership) doesn’t put the people behind the DCAU in charge. Why the hell not? At least they have a vision. But if the current ownership’s creative vision only extends as far as boffo box office receipts, they’re never going to get their effort off the ground. Disney understands that better than Zaslav and so continues to succeed wildly with Marvel. They keep a real creative in charge and let the audiences connect with the characters (or not) instead of just trying to create a blockbuster that will enrich the shareholders. It’s disgusting, and ultimately doomed to fail. Let the creatives do their job, and audiences will follow…with the money. But I think DC will continue to put the cart before the horse here.
Because, right now, I’d imagine DCAU is keeping its fucking head down and trying, begging, praying not to be noticed by any of the errant dickslips from Discovery.
I’ve been saying this for years, at this point it’s obvious that they have no damn clue what they’re doing.
Zaslav looks like he’s never seen an animated anything in his life. When he was a kid, he used to sit down in front of the TV on Saturday mornings with a bowl of cereal and watch financial reports. I can’t wait until all of this mess really starts to catch fire and blow the fuck apart. Thanks, Zack Snyder! You worthless fucking hack..
Having worked at a company that recently merged with another large company, I can tell you that the top executives at Discovery/HBO/WB/DC right now are focused entirely on carving off the biggest piece of pie for themselves while undercutting their rivals, which means the people in charge of the DCAU are probably busy fighting to keep their jobs. The scenario you describe – in which an enlightened CEO notices that one department is doing great work and promotes the head of that department to take on more responsibility – is what healthy, well-functioning businesses do. That seems very unlikely for Zaslav & Co. It’s far more likely that they’re acting out a full season of “Succession” over there, and our best hope is that the DCAU doesn’t lose some/all of its best people in the process.
Well, Zaslav has immediately pissed off Paul Dini by killing scoob 2, likely pissed off Bruce Timm by cutting off caped crusader and has largely pissed off the wider animation industry by removing infinity train and all those other animated shows from hbo max. So I sincerely doubt anyone working on DC animated movies is feeling particularly receptive to zaslav these days.
In general, they haven’t been treating titles overseen by Sam Register well.
I’ll do it. My first orders of business:- Release Batgirl movie while telling Zazlav to go fuck himself.
– Convince Michael Keaton to star in another Batman film.
– Greenlight a good Superman movie.
– Bring back Sheriff Lobo.
I know Black Adam is a is a passion project for The Rock, but I really think he’d be an incredible Superman. Maybe he’s too bulked up to make a convincing Clark Kent, but it would be fun and drive the MAGA/Kokatu in Action crowd crazy. And with Florence Pugh as Lois Lane, baby, you’ve got a stew goin’.
In a universe where Louis Lane is Clark Kent’s daughter? Because the Rock is roughly twice her age FYI.
Yeah. I always forget how young she is. Meh, okay. As long as Olivia Wilde doesn’t play Lois, I’m good.
She would actually be a pretty great Cat Grant, if they bring that character to the movies.
If they ever wanted to make a John Stewart Green Lantern work, The Rock would have been money
but I really think he’d be an incredible Superman.LMAO what has he done recently that made you come to this, frankly, asinine conclusion
You have the job. Congrats!
The way more than one outlet picked up on this story of “Dan Lin is in talks to be head of DC” and ran immediately to “Ink currently drying on Dan Lin’s contract to be head of DC” made me incredibly doubtful that it was going to go through after all. I’m not sure if it was the usual inattention to detail pop culture websites have these days or one or both parties trying to gain control of the negotiation by leaking rumors, but it all just seemed too sudden to me.Very on brand for this Disaster Channel to be unconcerned with filling the position that is the very linchpin of their reset strategy. Just go ahead and start production on Flash 2 and WW3 (yeah, probably that one too at this rate) and catch up with the details later.
Just put Greg Weisman in charge. He’s already trying to cram an entire DC universe worth of storylines into Young Justice. He probably has enough ideas for like 20 movies already.
Eh, Weisman is ok but he really kitchen sinked the last Young Justice season. They could have cut out a quarter of the smaller stories and actually moved the main Light/Darkseid plot along a bit.
That said, I really hope they get picked up for one more season somehow. If someone actually tells him he needs to wrap it up I think he’ll be able to conclude it pretty well.
They’re off to a good start.
For me the best solution would to hire two people, a producer known for creativity but also bringing out the best in people (genuinely no idea who that could be) and then someone who knows and loves DC Comics, perhaps Mark Waid, Grant Morrison or Tom King, to oversee which movies should be made and the directions they take. Whether any of those people would want the job is another question (I really doubt Morrison would, for instance), but I think it would save DC and avoid making it a carbon copy of what Feige’s done.
Hamada was literally the producer bringing out the best in the current directors. It’s why the dc movie output sharply improved from 2018 to 2022.
Not huge fan of much of the DC film and TV stuff – the outfits always look to plastic-y and cheap. And the tones are all over the place.Surely, in this day and age, they could simply wipe the slate clean and start again. Maybe using The Batman as starting point?
Zaslav: Mr Lin, here is the dumpster fire we’d like you to take control of!Dan Lin:
I sure as hell wouldn’t want to work for zaslav or deal with Snyder fans. And I freaking love DC and Lin clearly did too. The crazy thing was DC films were actually doing better under hamada until zaslav came in. Now within months they went from a massive back to back success of peacemaker and the batman and they’re back to being a nightmare trainwreck. All because of damn zaslav.
Get this over with and back the dump truck full of money up to Snyder’s house already.
See, they want DC to actually succeed. Not hand it back to Snyder to destroy even further than he already did
To be clear, I don’t want that to happen. Just given what we’ve seen of the quality of Zaslav’s decisions so far, it’s the laziest and worst course of action, so probably that’s going to be it.
It’s been hilariously pathetic to read Zaslav has already tried to get Todd Philips to take on a “advisory” role across all DC content. Philips apparently politely declined, since he knows next to nothing about DC. So zaslav threw 150 million at him for joker 2. It’s definitely mad times.
I think the biggest mark against Snyder for zasalv would be that Snyder is pretty dead set on completing his “5 movie arc” and ending DC there, whereas zaslav wants more and more dc for ever and ever.
They did that once, and that led to the mess they’re in now. I like a lot of Zack’s stuff, Dawn of the Dead was great, his Watchmen adaptation, while I agree, the tone is off, I still really enjoy because he had the sense to set it in the 80’s. Also, I’ve seen what other filmmakers had in mind, and he got closer to it than any of those others. I feel like Zack’s at his best when he’s working with R rated material, he was never a good fit for an all audiences property like DC.
Dan lin had a literally seconds long podcast comment from months back when he (maybe jokingly) called Snyder fans bots. So the second Lin was said to be in the running, THAT got immediately blown up by the Snyder fans. So make no mistake, Dan Lin got a slight taste of this kind of Snyder fan bullshit and undoubtedly used that as a reason to back away from Zasalv.