Ezra Miller stars as Barry Allen in Warner Bros.’ “Lightning.”
Warner Bros. Discovery
“The Flash” is loser. “Black Adam” was bust. And does anyone remember “Shazam: Fury of the Gods”?
DC Studios needs more than just a hero, it needs a new strategy – something different than even its recently established one restart schedule.
DC and its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, the envy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s easy to see why. MCU movies, including those that haven’t been released Disneyas of 2008, they have grossed about $30 billion worldwide. CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav directed DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran to create their own shared universe featuring iconic characters like Batman and Superman.
The problem is that Warner Bros. and DC are already working on the tail end of a previous — and failed — attempt to bring their characters together through multiple movies and shows. In theaters, DC’s Justice League just can’t measure up to Marvel’s Avengers.
A likely answer to the problems of Warner Bros. and DC is right in front of them, though: character-specific franchises that follow a single filmmaker’s vision, not a TV-style script. Basically, let your heroes fly solo.
It has worked for DC properties before, even recently.
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Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, which ended in 2012, was a well-reviewed box office hit. And while both were linked to a previous attempt to create a DC cinematic universe, 2017’s “Wonder Woman” and 2018’s “Aquaman” focused mainly on their title characters, garnering big bucks and acclaim in the process.
To make it even better, look no further than the financial and critical success of Todd Phillips’ “Joker” and Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Neither film is connected to the expanded universe.
Released in 2019, “Joker” grossed more than $1 billion worldwide despite being rated R, while also winning a best actor Oscar for star Joaquin Phoenix. Last year’s “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson as the early-career Caped Crusader, grossed around $750 million worldwide. A sequel to both films is in the works.
But so does “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” from “Flash” director Andy Muschietti. He will not play Pattinson and will instead serve as “introducing the DCU Batman“, according to Gunn. How many different Batmen does an already saturated movie audience need? Especially after “The Flash,” which featured four different dark knights from previous movies and shows.
Fun vs. homework
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” by Marvel Studios.
Disney
Comics were once a refuge from homework. Now, to keep up with everything that’s going on in Disney’s MCU and Sony’s Spider-Verse, which is also connected to the MCU, you have to watch almost everything that came before to get up to speed. That’s dozens of movies and shows, all the way back to the original Robert Downey Jr. “Iron Man.
“The Flash,” meanwhile, might be the most intense comic book movie pop quiz, even though the DC cinematic universe has been all over the place. It’s packed with cameos (some real, some CGI) from past DC movies and shows, right down to George Reeves’ black and white Superman.
But to get all the gags, you really have to be into it. Unless you’re a big fan of “Clerks” director Kevin Smith — big enough to see his standup specials, that is, the “Flash” sequence involving Nicolas Cage’s version of Superman. fight with a giant spider it can get lost in you. The point of the film, which sees George Clooney reprise his role as Bruce Wayne 26 years after the poorly received “Batman and Robin,” is clearly aimed at Gen-Xers and older millennials, not today’s younger audiences.
Even the MCU model stumbled at times. Disney CEO Bob Iger himself suggested that the studio went to the well too often with certain characters, after the fourth Thor film and the third installment of Ant-Man flopped at the box office. This should be another red flag for DC Studios.
DC’s Gunn recently acknowledged that they exist “too many” superhero movies and shows If someone can come up with a creative way to change course, it’s him.
After initially working with schlock factory Troma Films, Gunn has built a strong Hollywood career as a writer and director, alternating between R-rated films like “Slither” and mainstream stuff like his Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel and Disney. The third entry in the series snapped the MCU out of its mini funk. It is the second highest-grossing film of 2023 so far, behind The Super Mario Bros.
And he already has some DC work on his resume: the 2020 film “The Suicide Squad” and its 2022 companion series “Peacemaker,” both of which received wide acclaim.
Gunn is writing and directing “Superman: Legacy,” which is slated for release in 2025. It aims to usher in a new DC shared universe. But he still has time to rethink his approach and let the Man of Steel — and all the other DC heroes — be super in their own right.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of Universal and CNBC.