DC finally unveils their massive extended universe plan
New DC co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran will open their DCU with a phase called Chapter One, "Gods And Monsters"
Aux News Viola Davis
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s James Gunn and Peter Safran’s highly anticipated plan for the DCU, which has finally arrived after three long months of waiting. And from the looks of it, it might just save the day for the, let’s say chaotic studio.
Gunn seems to be making good on his promise to reboot the DC universe “from scratch,” starting with Chapter One, “Gods And Monsters” which will premiere between 2025-2027. This phase includes at least 5 new films: Superman Legacy (written by Gunn), Batman and Robin centered The Brave And The Bold, and films featuring Swamp Thing, Supergirl, and the rogue squadron The Authority. Newly announced television shows include the animated series Creature Commandos, live-action Peacemaker spinoff Waller (which stars Viola Davis), Booster Gold, Paradise Lost, and a Lanterns series.
Gunn and Safran plan to release two movies and two HBO Max series per year, over the course of eight to ten years. No specific talent has been announced for any of these titles yet (apart from Waller), but the larger plan was conceived with the help of a writer’s room including Christina Hodson, Jeremy Slater, Drew Goddard, Christal Henry, and Tom King.
Gunn is definitely taking inspiration for this new plan from his Marvel days. “We’re going to promise that everything from our first project forward is going to be unified,” he said. He continued:
One of our strategies is that we take our diamond characters — Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman– and we use that to help prop up other characters that people don’t know. Like what happened with the Guardians (of the Galaxy) in some way. Like taking teams like The Authority, which is I know is just as spectacular idea for a film that is completely different take on superheroes. Because it’s really connected to Superman. It’s about to use those well-known properties to help lead into lesser known properties.
“We’ve gotten very lucky for the next four projects,” he added, speaking of the previously announced Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (March 17), The Flash (June 16), Blue Beetle (August 16), and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (December 25), which will still go ahead as planned and lead into Chapter One, “Gods And Monsters.”
Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie A Deux, Matt Reeve’s Batman sequel, and HBO Max’s Penguin series will also go ahead as planned, but are not a part of Gunn and Safran’s vision and will be “labeled clearly as DC-Elseworlds, just like the comics do,” according to the director.
Still, don’t expect too many more of these outside-universe projects going forward. “As everyone here probably knows, the history of DC is pretty messed up. There is the Arrowverse. There was the DC EU which then split became the Joss Whedon Justice League at one point, became the Snyder-verse at the other point. There was Superman and Lois, there’s the Reeves-verse. There’s all these different things,” Gunn said. “No one was minding the mint, they were just giving away IP like they were party favors to any creators that smiled to them.”
“The bar is going to be very high for projects outside of the DCU,” Safran added.
“Stakes are enormous,” according to Safran. “It was a brand in chaos and it’s an opportunity to build an extraordinary standalone studio with the best IP and the best stories in the world.”
(via Deadline)
166 Comments
I guess this means – for better or for worse – Berlanti’s GL Corps show is dead. Still, excited to see what they do with John Stewart and fucking pumped for a live-action Booster Gold show. I hope they include Ted Kord!
Just gimme those two doofuses fucking around and finding out, constantly
Yeah I’m so happy we get Booster gold and I badly want to see if they get John Stewart GL right. I’m happy with all of this.
I think that will depend on whether or not the upcoming Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle film is successful enough or not.
I noticed Susan Sarandon is playing “Victoria Kord” in the upcoming Blue Beetle movie, which is an interesting choice.
I wonder if this means Berlanti is done with DC? Be kinda interesting to see Marvel hire him to take charge of the TV side.
That’s what it sounds like. Almost all of his DC shows have been cancelled – unceremoniously so in some cases. I wonder if he made a conscious decision to move on from DC or if he’s been shut out. If it’s the latter, I’d be pissed. He is directly and indirectly responsible for adapting huge swaths of the DCU to live-action for the first time in a way that’s respectful of the source material and inclusive of different races, faiths, and sexualities. He executive produces the best live-action version of Superman in decades, and the best live-action DC show period up until Peacemaker (Doom Patrol). If I was Gunn, I’d at least give him a call.
Plus, he mentioned to do all that with a small tv-show budget. Seems like a guy I’d wanna keep around. I guess he still does the Flight Attendant for HBO Max so he’s still in the family…
Yeah, sure. Why not?
I really miss the days when I could just go see a fucking movie or watch a goddamn TV show or play a christing videogame and not have to even think about all this shit..
No one is forcing you think about any of this. You didn’t even have to click on the link to the story.
No one is forcing you to respond to me either, shithead..
Sheesh, you really are Pete Worst.
Are you sure? I could be an imposter..
No one is forcing you to respond to me either, shithead.
lol all that waiting and hype and it’s still the same old shit – we’re gonna do a superman and a batman and another batman and maybe a girl superman if i don’t get fired first.
How else do you make a DCU work? The obvious playbook is to do a Superman and then a Batman and then have the two of them meet and then they meet Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and stuff and then they form the Justice League. The Snyderverse failed in nearly every element of execution — they never even got Superman and Batman right — but the playbook was sound.
well i’m just teasing, obviously he can’t not make a superman movie.frankly, i don’t think making a universe is a good idea at all, especially since they already have to be like ‘well we have existing batman and joker franchises that aren’t connected to each other, or this other universe i’m launching. we also have 4 movies this year that are unrelated to each of those things, but please get excited about superman, a character we have made 1.5 good movies out of in the last 50 years. we promise this time it’ll be good. also there’s gonna be another batman that will be friends with superman.’
I’m curious what that .5 good Superman movie is, because I could think of a few that you could make that argument for.
You start with Booster Gold, duh! This of all the BG fans out there who’ve never had a movie; they’ll go nuts! Guaranteed $1 billion box office minimum, and the stage is set for a successful DCEU.
Except that it’s a tv series. And I understand your snark, but in the comics there’s a really great storyline involving Booster and Rip Hunter that would make for a fantastic tv show, though I’ve no idea if Gunn’s intending on using it or not.
My guess is that they use Booster to explain any transitions from the old to new universe without the need for Flash. But if they draw from 52 and the booster gold book that spun out of that, they’ve got a great potential template.
I wasn’t reading many DC comics when the whole 52 thing came around, but over the past year or so I’ve picked up a fair few at charity shops and really enjoyed some it – Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man run is superb, as his Frankenstein Agent Of S.H.A.D.E., I Vampire has a great first volume (though it’s a bit poor by the end), and Amanda Connor’s Harley Quinn series is fun, even if the amount of boob jokes is a bit embarrassing at times.
I think we’re thinking of different eras actually. You’re talking about the new 52 reboot I believe, which really ran the gamut in terms of quality.My memory may be failing me, but I think 52 the series – which was a weekly that ran for a year – was a few years before the reboot. Booster Gold was one of the principal protagonists, and he got involved in a mystery about why the past he’d traveled to had inconsistencies with the historical records. They followed that up with him bouncing around in time and getting involved in various iconic moments from DC history. Both are promising jumping off points for a series, I’d say.
Yes indeed – 52 came out from early-mid 2006 through early mid-2007 while the New 52 didn’t kick off until September 2011.Good memories.
Ah, right, thanks for the clarification – I grew up as a huge DC / Vertigo fan but lost track a bit in the 2000s. I’ll have to try and track down that 52 series (which I’m guessing will be expensive, but I’m such a big Booster fan that I’ll get round it sooner rather than later).
And I remember that series with Booster and Rip Hunter, and was quite frustrated when it eventually was cancelled, and definitely think that it would make a great series.
And I agree with you about the New 52 – I think it’s because I heard very mixed things about it that I didn’t bother reading any of it at the time, but was surprised to find some gems among the weaker stuff.
If you liked Lemire’s Animal Man run, the Swamp Thing run that ran concurrently was also really good. I think Scott Snyder wrote it? I remember Grant Morrison having a fun Action Comics run and a neat little high fantasy series, but I don’t remember much beyond that!
New 52 has a bad reputation overall but yeah there were some great books in there – Snyder/Capullo’s Batman, Morrison’s 19-issue Action Comics run, even Geoff Johns and Jim Lee’s Justice League run is pretty good (early on – it goes wildly off the rails in later issues).
I’d not known of Morrison’s Action Comics run, but love his All Star Superman, so that’s something else I’ll try to find!
It’s worth a read. It’s a very different flavour of Superman than All-Star but it’s good as its own thing.
Snyder’s Swamp Thing and Animal Man have quite a big crossover story so I’ve read a fair bit of it and liked it
James Gunn will never be able to create a hit TV series starring an obscure DC character!!!!
You joke, but this is the guy who made me feel for a talking tree that I never heard of before. Maybe spotlighting some D-listers wouldn’t be the worst idea…
I mean, that’s really not the WORST idea, is it? Kinda just take an Iron Man-level character, do one movie with him. Post-credits scene with Blue Beetle.Next movie, Green Lantern. Next movie… Martian Manhunter. Maybe stinger with Maxwell Lord, who’s putting a team together. Wait a few years to clear the memory hole of Cavil, Gadot, and even Pattinson, then reintroduce Superman, WW, and Batman with new, in-continuity casting. THEN you do a Justice League movie, main villain: Max Lord.
In fairness, the MCU succeeded with B- or C-level characters because other studios held the rights to the primo stuff.
How else do you make a DCU work?
I donno, just make some movies about whoever and build from there?
I mean, Marvel built a cinematic universe without any of its well-known characters. When they started, Spider-Man, The X-Men, and the Fantastic Four were their entire pop culture portfolio. Everyone talks about what a risk making a Guardians of the Galaxy movie was, but even Thor and Captain America were incredibly wild swings at the time, because frankly, those characters are fundamentally stupid (which is why no one wanted to license them).
Only now, 15 years later, are Marvel even hinting at future appearances for what were once their flagship characters, X-Men and FF.We know a DCU can be built from ash and leftovers because the only franchise to ever build something similar did exactly that.The problem is that DC isn’t being forced to figure our what to do without its flagship characters the way Marvel was.I’d love to see a DCU anchored by some randos I’ve never heard of.
I think there’s other ways for them to go. Superman and Batman are really well-known characters, they don’t have to have solo movie introductions. I’ve always thought Batman Beyond would be a good way to start and do something new while still retaining Bruce.
Reminder that everyone thinks you’re a nasty piece of shit and when was the last time you felt a sense of intimacy with anyone?
So to be honest there IS a lot of variety there. There was no way they were going to convince DC to ignore Superman and Batman entirely. You are getting Swamp Thing, Supergirl, and The Authority, and a bunch of stuff on streaming. Nice to finally get Robin back, maybe with a much better take than in the past. I only wish they had kept Cavill, but overall I am good with this plan. Biggest problem is that they are spinning all this up in a saturated superhero world, so time will tell on audience appetite vs fatigue.
well the other thing is that, based on wb’s track record, i have no reason to assume any of this will get made at all.
So… in your head, what announcement would have been worth the hype? A line-up of movies and shows that don’t include either Batman or Superman?
i really don’t know. this simultaneously feels like too much and not enough.
I think if anything manages to stave off superhero fatigue, it’ll be the projects like Creature Commandos, Paradise Lost, and Swamp Thing which don’t resemble traditional or really even modern superhero stories.
I assume the three people who starred your post are the same three people who have heard of Swamp Thing or the “Authority”. Iis (s)he related to the Situation?
This feels like buildup where the characters of Damian Wayne and Jonathan Kent are going to be more of a focus than the characters playing Bruce and Clark in the long run. Wouldn’t be surprised if this phase um, chapter ends with the Justice League being defeated and the sons having to take up their fathers’ mantles.
It’s like complaining that the bible has too much god and jesus. It is what it is.
Pretty much my entirety of comic book knowledge comes from the cartoons – and I loooved the Justice League cartoon back in the day and at first was annoyed when they made it Justice League Unlimited – because I didn’t know or care about any of these B or C level heroes. But ultimately I ended up liking them way more than the original heavy hitters. So if another Superman reboot is what it takes to eventually get me a Question HBO series then I’m all for it.
When I think about all of the original screenplays and stories that this done-to-death content (because that’s all it is – content) will push out of the way and scuttle, it kinda’ pisses me off.
All those great, totally original movies that were totally going to get made before the meddling execs at DC ruined everything, exist entirely in your imagination.
“You switched the screenplays! And you doctored your stories! So that you could have…Provasic?”
hahahahaah that’s outstanding
Somehow this exists:
https://devlinmacgregor.com/provasic/
Outstanding.
So instead of being mad at the consolidation of movie studios, the continued corporatization of art into content, and late-stage capitalism, you settled on James Gunn’s DC Films slate. Nice.
When is that “late stage” supposed to begin & end?
Dwayne, we’re all happy that you’re here, but the fact is, no one wants to talk about the power hierarchy of the DC Universe right now. Also, please put that bottle of tequila away.
Can you really look at the current state of WB/Discovery and think that anything original and meaningful would actually get pushed out of the way and/or scuttled because of this? If anything, this is just life support for a brand that despite being successful, was managed by idiots.
lol
Genuinely excited for Superman and Batman movies taking inspiration from the Morrison runs. And imagine seeing a Batfamily on-screen that isn’t directed by Schumacher
Well, if this doesn’t just kill the genre outright, we’ll know that it’s an indestructible cockroach….which, as I say it out loud, I realize will probably end up being one of the DCU’s new villains/heroes.
the kids love a 5th attempt at swamp thing.
It’ll be kind of sad if Marvel makes Man-Thing an important part of the Multiverse Saga in the MCU before the new Swamp Thing gets off the ground.
He was already in Werewolf by Night and I quite liked Ted.
Swamp Thing > Man-Thing.That said, already too late MCU has already introduced Man-Thing.
Somehow they announced, then introduced the multiverse in the time since The Flash has been announced. That’s gotta sting.
Swamp Thing stars in arguably the single greatest Big Two comic run ever made.
Pretty psyched that Doom Patrol’s Jeremy Carver is going to work on Waller (which TBH wasn’t a project that I was thrilled about beyond wondering who else would show up).
Looks like Superman and Lois is going to get the axe. Which is a shame, because it’s been consistently great. I wouldn’t be surprised if they scrap the new season before March since this whole bullshit write-off trend is becoming so popular.
Gunn addressed that and said that they will have at most one additional season. Sounds like they gave the writers a heads up and we can have a satisfying conclusion even if it’s just this current season.
https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/superman-and-lois-one-or-two-more-seasons-james-gunn-peter-safran-1235506971/
Give Gunn a lot of credit here. He seemed to actually have answers to a lot of questions, and not just corporate-speak.
I think Gunn is just someone who has no b.s. Either he has an answer or he says he can’t answer it yet. Everyone else can wear their genius at work shirt and go home.
This is good news! Thanks for sharing that.
I think this season of Superman & Lois is fine because it airs on a network and recoups some of its cost through advertising (but it’s definitely probably dead after this season). Most of the stuff that’s gotten axed after finishing filming are streaming shows that are getting shopped around to other streaming services. Batgirl and that Scooby-Doo movie are really the only things to get disappeared for a “write-off.”
Glad to see that at least some stuff like Reeves/Pattinson’s Batman will exist outside of the new direction. I recently read Michael Uslan’s two memoirs about bringing Batman to the big screen, and he weighed in on the whole DCEU saying he thought it was a mistake to try and emulate what Marvel’s done. Constantly trying to connect things up is an anchor around the neck that limits possibilities and creativity. Tell fleshed-out, self-contained stories. And even if you use the same character in another project it doesn’t necessarily need to be the same version played by the same actor if you’re telling a completely different story.I know it’s a business first and foremost. And I hope Gunn’s DCEU turns out well, but I’m far more interested in any Elseworlds projects that might come up.
Hope the movies are birghter and easier to see than previous DC movies I know that is dead horse beating.
Dead Horse is one of my favorite super heroes because nobody beats him.
If Legacy isn’t a pre-Man Of Steel origin
movie, why does Superman need to be a younger actor then Henry Cavill?
Is this a separate continuity from the earlier interlocking DC movies?
Or is this fallout from The Flash Flashpointing things in his film?
It’d be great if the new Swamp Thing
movie could pick up where the prematurely cancelled TV show left off
with the same cast so we can finally witness that Swampy & Blue
Devil vs. Floronic Man battle royale! I’d also like Booster Gold to star Donald Faison & resolve Legends Of Tomorrow’s cliffhanger.
I’m sure Gunn or someone else high up in DC gave the reason that they are planning on having Superman be the centre of their cinematic universe, and so would need a younger actor that would be able and willing to play the part for the next decade or more. Cavill turns 40 this year, and will be 42 by the time Gunn’s Superman is released. He’d potentially be pushing 60 by the time they even want to wrap the character (assuming this vision of DC films is successful), by which time the insane demand to keep up the physique would be much harder at that age and would probably make him far less enthusiastic to play the part.
Although: how cool would it be if they did, and then at that point finally concluded with Kingdom Come?
With Elseworlds now an official branding, they should just go ahead and make a Kingdom Come movie. The way the original story is written, most of the exposition is revealed through flashback. They don’t need to “set anything up;” they can just do it.
No, agreed, I’m just mostly tickled with the idea of casting a 60-year-old Cavill in it.
I think (and hope) they’ll go for an adaption of All-Star Superman for their swansong, the world of Kingdom Come is probably a little too dark for what they have planned, and the conclusion of All-Star would allow them to potentially recast Superman after some time while also maintaining their established continuity.
I never got round to watching the Swamp Thing show (despite loving Alan Moore’s run, and hearing good things about the tv series) and had no idea Blue Devil was in it – I loved the goofy Blue Devil comic in the 80’s, but I’m guessing this is a much darker, bleaker take on the character?
Much darker, but also much bluer. Like a deep navy blue. Leaning towards a midnight blue, if you will.
I’m surprised how highly regarded the Swamp Thing show is. Other than a strong premiere, I thought it spun its wheels into the ground with endless melodrama. That’s all the more surprising since it was cut short by 3 episodes after DC canceled it.Blue Devil in the show is darker (he looks a bit like Tim Curry’s demon in Legend), but still pretty goofy since he’s played by Ian Zering.
Thanks for that, I’ll have to give the pilot a go, and if I struggle with it just jump forward to the Blue Devil episodes.
Yes, he’s more like Ghost Rider. I wonder if they used him because there was some red tape with Etrigan? The suit & surprisingly Ian Ziering’s performance are great though.
Wait, are they planning to integrate the original team for The Authority, or do the aborted Superman and The Authority alternative universe JL thing?Cause it would be super weird to have the original team in the regular continuity.
Given that hopping realities was a very integrated thing for The Authority from the very start, my guess is that they’re totally standalone for this movie, and if it does well, then later, not.
I don’t believe for a second The Authority will get made. I mean, did anyone at DC/Warner READ The Authority? I mean, okay, maybe as a streaming show because…no way to get that on the big screen, make it somehow like the comic and NOT get a hard R
Had a similar thought. The Authority comics aren’t even a little bit family-friendly.
Yeah, the guy who made The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker is definitely afraid of releasing a Hard R movie…
Eh, The Authority was dialed back quite a bit after it was rolled into the DC continuity and rebooted in the New 52. I expect it will be closer to that.
This summer get ready for… The Midnighter… and Apollo… in… Full. Penetration.
The Suicide Squad was rated R, why can’t an Authority movie be rated R? You know, since the guy who made The Suicide Squad is in charge now.
It’s impossible to do the original premise of the Authority in the DCU, unless you’re making them villains (which completely misses the point) or ineffectual.And there’s no way WB allows one of their blockbusters center around the heroes killing God.
Yeah, the Authority has failed every time they’ve tried to integrate it into the DCU in the comics. The just don’t work that well in the context of an established superhero universe. What fundamentally sets them apart from like the JLA or Avengers is a contempt for normal human politics and a general unwillingness to be bound be their laws and social mores. If you put that next to Superman, they either make him look like a well-meaning idiot or they’re straight-up villains, depending on how you focus the story. An adaptation of the first Wildstorm story could be great; there’s basically nothing after they moved into the DCU proper that feels like it could support a whole franchise.
I’ll be curious to see where they go with this. I’m a huge fan of the book during its original Warren Ellis/Bryan Hitch era (as well as the StormWatch run which kicked it all off).The beginning of Mark Millar’s run is not bad too though that goes off the rails after the first storyline. The first couple of attempts to reboot the concept (with Robbie Morrison and later Ed Brubaker) didn’t really work and Grant Morrison’s reboot only managed two issues before he exited.For my money, the best post-Ellis/Millar Authority was their appearances in StormWatch: Team Achilles between 2002 and 2004. Genuinely funny. A great, great book.The only issue with having Hitch and Quietly as your early artists – none of the people who got the book afterward (except perhaps Gene Ha) managed to capture the sheer cinematic scope of the book and left the Authority’s later runs to pale terribly in comparison.
I’ve not kept up with The Authority since the millennium – is Jenny Quantum now grown up and on the team? And most importantly, is she as British as Jenny Sparks was?
Golden Agouti Gerbil >>>>> Blue Beetle
One of our strategies is that we take our diamond characters — Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman– and we use that to help prop up other characters that people don’t know. Like what happened with the Guardians (of the Galaxy) in some way.It sounds like they are still very much going after the shared world trend here. This is the homogenous style of shared-world stuff that slowly killed my interest in the MCU…the half-and-half blend in each film of ‘the character whose name is in the title’ and ‘other characters we want to tease for future films’. It also kind of reminds me of DC’s direct-to-video animated fare, where they seemed too afraid to give you a John Constantine or Suicide Squad story without roping-in Batman as a prominent character.I guess I wonder how much of an appetite there is these days for the shared world stuff as well. It’s been a decade now since The Avengers came out and the Hollywood Gold Rush for other shared-world franchises came and went. It seems like all of DCU’s hits in the past decade were the films without any real link (or weak links at best) to other films in the DCU. Even Marvel kind of seems the same way… like the public has been kind of cool to a lot of the recent MCU movies post-Endgame, but still generally enjoys the limited series that run on Disney +.
The big question with the MCU right now is whether what ails it is people getting sick of shared universes, or if it’s the universe not being shared enough. The thing that really made Phase 1 seem shared was the promise of Avengers, a story that would bring all those characters together, at the end of it. Phases 2 and 3 were buildup to a confrontation with Thanos, a story that would impact and involve the Avengers and all of the new characters introduced afterward. Phase 4 hasn’t had a similar throughline that says “This is why these stories—even if they don’t look like it—are all part of a single, bigger story—you should watch all of them so that you can enjoy that bigger story when it hits sometime down the road.”Part of the problem is the narrative, but it’s worth noting that the pandemic hit the MCU’s secret sauce—Feige’s ability to keep the production and releases moving in an orderly fashion—hard. The Disney Plus releases got (and have stayed) far ahead of cinematic releases, so shows and movies that were supposed to come out relatively close to each other—WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness, Ms. Marvel and Marvels—have instead been released over a year apart. Sony held to its schedule, which meant that No Way Home—which was originally supposed to be a sequel to MultiVerse of Madness—instead came out first. Maybe if things hadn’t gotten out of sync, the illusion of a larger story arc would’ve held a bit better. It’s also possible that tying continuity to Disney Plus the way they have was a mistake.I don’t think that Marvel’s problem is that people are sick of shared universes or superheroes, it’s that they’re not doing it well enough at the moment.
Exactly, the problem with marvel lately is that the shared universe has gotten a bit discordant. And also some of the movies have just been flat out not that good.
The Paradise Lost thing sounds kind of boring but I like the rest.Though I swear to god if Donald Faison isn’t Booster Gold I will be pissed, he was a great pick for the role and hardly got any time in it.
The takeaway I got from Gunn’s video and his other Twitter comments is, “Fuck anything that wasn’t in production before I got here. It’s the Gunnverse now, baby!” Which to be fair, may or may not be what WB needs its DC-related projects to do, but I’m not holding my breath on any actor reprising their roles again. *sighs in David Ramsey Green Lantern*
I definitely think they do need to revamp everything because what they were doing before was definitely not working at all.Gunn should be smart enough to cast Faison as Booster again though, he’s a perfect fit.I think Diggle’s decision not to be a GL was totally in character: He’d been through a LOT, he deserved to just be with his family.
Of course I say that and he literally gives an interview saying “This is not the Gunnverse.” lolhttps://gizmodo.com/james-gunn-dc-slate-info-flash-aquaman-justice-league-1850051467And also, he explicitly says some actors will apparently be coming back after all, though from the context, it sounds like he’s talking about the DCEU, not the CWverse, the HBO Maxverse, the Netflixverse, or any other verse. But who knows? It sounds like he’s still figuring shit out.
I’m happy for all of this. Brave and the Bold will be interesting, because I wonder if they show that Bruce already had 3 Robins before Damian.
Three Robins, two Batgirls, and a Batmite. And you don’t want to know how many Bat Hounds he’s gone through!
How dare you! There is 0nly one ACE! 🙂
He just goes to a farm every few years and then comes back after some plastic surgery
Nooooooooooo! That can’t be true!
Gunn said it’s based on Grant Morrison’s run and Dick, Jason and Tim were significant parts, so my read is that we’re getting a Batman who’s a few years into his career and Dick’s become Nightwing, at least, by the time Damian enters the picture.
I hope so, because in the comics, Dick and Damian relationship is as great if not better than Bruce’s and Damian’s (to me).
“We were the best, Richard. No matter what anyone says.”SOB
I think it’d be a huge mistake to kick off this new Batman continuity with Damian already there. Just doesn’t leave a lot of room to go.
I’m not crazy about it as Dick has to be grown already and I really thought they wanted to invest in many Teen Titans into a big movie but I have faith in Gunn.
Gunn has said he is introducing the other Robins. I’m guessing that is Dick and Tim at the least.
I also think it’s interesting to note that, once again, the CW Arrowverse kind of did what the movies are doing/going to do first. James Gunn’s making a big deal about how he’s casting people for the animated series that could also potentially play them in live-action, which is something the Arrowverse did with Vixen and the Ray. Not saying that they were the first, the only ones, or whatever on that embracing that kind of synergy, but I think it’s noteworthy nonetheless.
Posting this in your article would have gone a long way.
Behold our slate! The guy who imprisoned people, the guy who went on an anti vaxx rant, Johnny Depp’s lying ex-girlfriend, and the version of Blue Beetle whose comic has yet to make it past issue 20. Okay.
I’m bored of these movies already.So is Suicide Squad/Peacemaker going to be revisted? Or is that done too?
I’m pretty sure Peacemaker season 2 is already in the works.
Kind of weird not to mention it here, isn’t it?
Gunn said Peacemaker S2 is being delayed because his attention is currently on the new Superman movie which he’s writing (and possibly directing). He also made it sound like the new Waller HBO Max series will be a continuation of what happened in Peacemaker S1 but it’s not clear how much of Peacemaker cast will be involved.
This is all just a big snooze. I dunno. I’d much rather have thoughtful, independent movies with little but easter eggs to bring them together in continuity. It’s what DC is best at. DC is at its worst when it’s trying to shoe-horn in large events (which it does with extreme rapidity because it doesn’t know what to do with its mess other than just having the Flash go fast and reset shit, or whatever).
I feel like the problem DC has is they keep going back to the well. In a way, having to start with B-level characters helped the MCU in a way because general audiences weren’t coming in to an Iron Man with a bunch of expectations and demands, whereas DC gets bogged down in questions and articles if they have Batman fire a gun or Superman kill Zod. If Marvel were to recast Tony Stark, make more movies, then recast him again for another trilogy, then recast him again for some more, then recast him again for a movie, by the time they’d be getting around to recasting him to take another new run at Iron Man, making a movie that satisfies audience’s standards and expectations is going to be just about impossible.
Legion of Doom movie or gtfo
I still want to see the Legion of Doom show Jon Cryer pitched.
Solomon Grundy want pants too!!
You beat me to it you magnificent bus stop!
This is exactly what cautious optimism was made for.I’m thrilled he’s concentrating on some of the more oddball corners of DC comics and that the TV shows and movies will cross-pollinate. I wish this was more of a hard break from the movies that came before and/or were shot but haven’t been released yet. The Flash is just an albatross at this point and I don’t want it getting any of its stank on these projects going forward. I also wish Superman and Batman were given some more time to cool before their next movies were announced. However, I am really interested in what Gunn could do with an earnest Superman movie and it’s the first Superman project I’ve looked forward to since the animated series was announced in the 90s.And we’re getting more Weasel, and that’s gotta count for something!
The Authority? That’s a…_wild_ choice.
I mean, I liked the Authority comics but 1) they were effectively a Justice League pastiche with incredibly and deliberately overpowered characters and 2) it’s pretty much intertwined with the voice of Warren Ellis (as many of his comics are) and I have no idea if that’s a good thing for a film and 3) the most interesting runs of the comics were the ones where it was all intertwined with Stormwatch and the Century Babies and a ton of Wildstorm/Ellis-verse backstory and unless we get a shedload of exposition it’s just gonna be “hey here’s a bunch of really powerful superheroes that only comics nerds from the early 00’s are aware of.”
I don’t care about phases or chapters…just make one good movie!!!
Are The Authority “really connected” to Superman now? (The last time I read The Authority, they weren’t even in the main DC continuity. Could be interesting to do a movie version of “What’s So Funny About Truth Justice and the American way” with the actual Authority instead of stand-ins. Not necessarily good, but possibly interesting.
That…is a great idea.
I’d be really curious to know how that story would hit for people who weren’t reading comics, or particularly both Superman and The Authority back then, because it’s such a product of that specific moment in time.It’s a fine issue but it does feel a bit weird given, with the hindsight of more than 20 years, that The Authority’s period of relevance was ultimately pretty brief and few people have given a shit about them for decades now.
That Authority movie caught me really by surprise, but I’m now wondering if Gunn is going to stick to Ellis’s original vision of the team. As in that case I could easily see that movie setting them up as the complex antagonist force that would lead to the formation of the Justice League.
Gunn mentioned they’d come into conflict with Superman (in the least) so that would be a nice opening to have the JL organically form as heroes who stand against The Authority’s cynical MO.
You know maybe instead of a huge plan for all these movies over all these years.Maybe try making one that doesn’t completely shit the bed. With no interlocking story with other. Just one good movie then maybe add a few more. DC/WB needs to remember they are building DC Phase 1. Not Phase 3. Marvel didn’t come out and announce a shit load of movies to start. They made one. Then 3 more. Then shit started rolling
I think the monkey wrench is, not only have they already made “just one good movie” multiple times (Wonder Woman, Shazam!, The Suicide Squad) and just failed to continue the momentum, even with this announcement, they’re not really in Phase 1. When Gunn was talking about the four movies that were already set to be released this year, he cites The Flash as the “reset” movie, and then goes on to say that it leads into Aquaman 2, which “leads into” (his words) Superman: Legacy. He also said they’re “talking” to Gal Gadot about returning as Wonder Woman. So it doesn’t really sound like there’s any hard line between the old DCEU and the Gunn-DCEU, or else The Flash would’ve been the last movie before Legacy. Alternatively, you could look at WB as being stuck in a perpetual DC Phase 1. The cinematic landscape is also very different today than it was in 2008.So given all of that in mind, I don’t think WB/Gunn/et al have a choice but to announce plans, knowing full well that there simply the latest in a long line of “announced plans.” It’s just what studios do in 2023. I think to Safran and Gunn’s credit, they don’t just acknowledge it upfront, they talk about the importance of every project being able to standalone as a story that anyone can understand and enjoy without seeing anything else.There’s plenty of room for Zaslav or someone else to fuck it all up. But as far as “huge plans” go, I’m cautiously optimistic.
DC/WB needs to remember they are building DC Phase 1. Not Phase 3. Marvel didn’t come out and announce a shit load of movies to start. They made one. Then 3 more. Then shit started rollingI mean, isn’t this what they’ve already tried doing? Lol.
Not really. They went Man of Steel, Batman V Superman(featuring Wonder Woman for some reason) then Justice League.
Imagine if he got Will Keenan from Tromeo And Juliet to play Superman.
I think the biggest issue I can see is having the 4 still slated “lead into” Chapter 1. That suggests that the DCEU that produced Batman v. Superman, Wonder Woman 2, and The Justice League is still canon and has to be reckoned with and accepted. Unless the plan is to use the Flash movie to reboot the whole thing (which, to be fair, has been a rumor for a while) it seems to me the best idea would be to label everything before Chapter 1 “Elseworlds” and explicitly start over without worrying about what came before. Movie audiences will forgive you taking a mulligan.
I agree that it would be a lot cleaner if WB just pushed The Flash to be the absolutely last thing they released before Gunn’s slate of movies, but he did clarify that everything from Superman: Legacy onwards is canon, which suggests that he might incorporate elements from the previous DCEU movies into his universe if he likes them, and he might blatantly contradict events seen in movies before Legacy.It’s messy af, but in his defense, it’s essentially what DC did with Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Unless the plan is to use the Flash movie to reboot the whole thing (which, to be fair, has been a rumor for a while) Gunn said in his announcement video that Flash “resets the entire DC Universe.” So, yeah, that’s the plan.
Except… it doesn’t. Because Jason Momoa’s Aquaman 2 releases after The Flash. And Viola Davis, who appeared as Amanda Waller in Suicide Squads 1 & 2, Black Adam, and Peacemaker is reprising her role in Waller. So at best, The Flash is resetting “some” of the DC Universe.
Keeping one actor in a role doesn’t interfere with a reset. Gunn was effusive about trying to keep such a great actor as Viola Davis, and not recast Waller, even if it’s in a new continuity. Aquaman 2 (or Flash for that matter) were already out of Gunn and Safran’s hands when they were hired, much like Shazzam 2 and the next Joker and Batman. They were coming out no matter what for financial reasons. Just don’t expect them to continue beyond that.
Well, it’s not just one actor, and Gunn specifically said Aquaman 2 “leads into” his Superman movie, which struck me as very odd phrasing. I’m not saying the DC Universe won’t be reset; I’m just saying it’s not a hard reset by any means.
Pre-season bets:The hits- Brave and the Bold, Swamp Thing, Lanterns, Paradise LostThe misses- Superman Legacy, Supergirl, The Authority, Booster Gold
Why are there no ape-centric films for its first slate?
Superman AND Batman….so original. James Gunn is clearly a visionary….
So many people are just burned the hell out on superhero stuff this point. I’m sure the big tentpole ones will all make their 200-300 mil domestically, but if they’re intent on chasing Avengers type numbers, I just don’t see it.
“No one was minding the mint, they were just giving away IP like they were party favors to any creators that smiled to them.”
Creators like… James Gunn.
And the mint did fine. Arrowverse had some excellent DC moments, Aquaman stopped being a joke in DCEU, not to mention Peacemaker was one of the best shows of 2022.
Sure there have been missteps, but even Marvel has weak entries, and I’m sure this new DCU will have them too.
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Not to be confused with the phenomenal film Gods & Monsters, about the director of the Frankenstein movies starring Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, and Lynn Redgrave!
Say it with me: Too little, too late.So I guess they are finally admitting they wanted to be like Marvel all along.
The only big red flag is the idea that they’re going to have the DCU and then “elseworlds” shows/movies. I get that WB can’t exactly scrap Joker 2 or The Batman 2, but knowing Peter Safran’s track record and the mandate WB seems to have, I have a suspicion we’re about to see a world with 2 – 3 separate Batman’s and I wonder if casual viewers are going to get on board with that. Maybe the swings will play off, but DC is weirder than Marvel in some ways because DC has so many entities that are already super well known. So introducing Damian as Robin is going to be jarring to some non-fans and presumably non-fans are where they are going to make their money…I wonder how long WB will give it to gain traction before they’re like “this underperformed…let’s pivot” or “this overperformed so you can only do that.”
I don’t think we’ll be seeing many more Elseworlds or DCEU movies beyond what WB is already committed to. Gunn and Safran have been quite equivocal about Miller, Levi, Mamoa, Gadot, etc. coming back. It’s all, “well, you never know,” type statements. It sound more like they don’t want to sound unappreciative of the prior actors or make the movies they are committed to seem meaningless going forward. What they have been unequivocal about is that the new DCU is a full-on reboot across all media (the cause of which is the Flash movie that’s apparently had it’s ending changed again) and I doubt Gunn and Safran want these extraneous Joker and Batman continuities hanging around beyond their next movies. Their marching orders are to create an MCU style continuum, and these Elseworld versions of massively important characters like Batman and Joker do nothing but interfere with that. The huge but is, as you mentioned, do execs, specifically Zaslav, have the patience to establish a new continuity? If the upcoming Joker and Batman movies are quite profitable does Zaslav say we have to keep them going? Despite how much that would hurt what Gunn and Safran are trying to establish? I mean, it would be moronic to try and keep two big screen versions of Batman going at the same time. It would financially and creatively undercut the whole point of hiring Gunn and Safran to establish a new direction. It will be interesting. Zaslav is notoriously the most short term profit exec out there.
They’ve also been unequivocal including today that Elseworlds is happening and that projects outside the DCU are actively in development. They said explicitly that the “DCU will be just one part of the multiverse.” So that sure sounds like they’ve been told they have to.The Batman made $707 million. They signed a massive first look deal with Matt Reeves and he has the Penguin show in addition to the sequel to the Batman. Joker 2 likely is going to reference Batman in some way. Gunn implied Season 2 of Peacemaker will happen as an Elseworlds.The multi-approach may well be Zaslav’s mandate to them because it sure does sound like him, but yeah, I absolutely think he will undercut them at every turn.Everything except Peacemaker would debut before Gunn’s Batman stuff. I can imagine Zaslav specifically staying quiet if Reeves is successful again.
It wasn’t brand confusion that sank the DCEU. It was that the “pillar” films were garbage.
We don’t want a gritty Wonder Woman prequel ala Game Of Thrones. We need a joyful one featuring kangaroo-riding, bondage play, & Diana being sculpted from living clay without a father!
No gods, no monsters!
I don’t think they get that the bloom is off the superhero rose and these films will succumb to the laws of diminishing returns. Time to go a new direction but that’s just to much work for creatively bereft Hollywood.