Discovery Wants To Revitalize Superman

[Vordan]

That's what I've been saying.

Seems to me the best course of action is to take the successful films and finish up their trilogies. The Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam....that'll take a few years at least. And Discovery can take that time to really put some legitimate effort into figuring out where the DCEU went wrong, and put a solid plan together for a fresh attempt at a shared universe.

Strange 2 (potentially) making a billion is damn impressive. It'd be nice if DC could generate that kind of profit as often as Marvel. But that's not how it's shaped up. The Batman cleared at least 700M though, and that's a hell of a lot better than most of the DCEU's films. I'd rather have a stand-alone movie that can clear 700M than a shared universe movie that can't clear 300.

But Discovery would rather have a shared universe movie that gets mediocre reviews and still clears 1b over a standalone film that gets rave reviews but only clears 700m. Zaslov only cares about the money.

Eh, I can do that. Even in bad shows some actors can be good.


Oh please - the only DCEU movie to cross a billion was Aquaman. Which is countered by Joker making over a billion on a smaller budget, an R Rating, and no China. Meanwhile The Batman not beating a Marvel film isn't that big a deal - it's done better than most other DC films, especially during our Covid Era. The Batman was a success, and a better one than most of the DCEU, so it's a terrible argument to use to pivot to shared universe.

Which is more a testament to the popularity of Joker than indicative of anything else. Discovery clearly agrees with you that the DCEU has been a mess, it just disagrees with you about the direction. No offense but Zaslov could give two shits about your dislike for the shared universe, if they are indeed pivoting back to the DCEU, it’s because like everyone else in Hollywood they’re seeing the profit returns even mediocre MCU films get compared to everything else.

[Alpha]

700 million for a Batman movie with rave reviews and got a whole month without any competition isn't very good. And Doctor Strange shuts down the Covid argument.

I don't blame it on the movie itself, because I quite liked it. I blame it on the marketing that made it look like The Dark knight all over again

[DochaDocha]

700 million for a Batman movie with rave reviews and got a whole month without any competition isn't very good. And Doctor Strange shuts down the Covid argument.

I don't blame it on the movie itself, because I quite liked it. I blame it on the marketing that made it look like The Dark knight all over again

I think the marketing was lacking, but I also have a personal theory (with no real evidence to back it up, so I guess it's less "theory" and more "gut feeling") that the movie's lack of whimsy that MCU movies have didn't help things. If that's the case, it's really too bad, because I really enjoy these grounded takes on Batman.

[Ascended]

But Discovery would rather have a shared universe movie that gets mediocre reviews and still clears 1b over a standalone film that gets rave reviews but only clears 700m. Zaslov only cares about the money.

Yeah, and it ain't happening. What WB/Discovery/AT&T/whoever *want* doesn't amount to anything. What they *have* is a shared universe that nobody likes and don't watch, and stand-alone films that people do.

Everybody wishes they were making MCU money. But as the saying goes, if wishes were horses then poor men would ride.

It's not that DC "can't" build a successful shared universe. It's that the one they built isn't successful, and by all appearances isn't gonna be (outside of the occasional big win like Aquaman or Peacemaker).

They only care about the money, which is right and proper because that's business. Which is why I didn't bother mentioning reviews. But grasping, over and over again, for something they can't catch isn't making them money. It's costing them money.

Better to abandon the DCEU and start over than waste more time and money trying to fix something that, by all accounts, seems unfixable.

Anyone in business is after the money. But anyone in business who's good at the job knows that you have to stop throwing good money after bad, trying to make an investment work that clearly isn't. Maintaining an investment that isn't paying out because you already spent so much money on it is a common mistake in business, but it's a bad practice that always results in losses to the income statement.

Besides, it's damn unlikely DC would generate MCU levels of revenue even if the shared universe suddenly became good. Marvel makes the money they do because they have rock solid brand recognition, trust, and loyalty. DC has the opposite. People don't trust their movies, with good reason, and that means their films will have a lower average gross no matter what. They're gonna have to rebrand, leave all the unpopular things behind, and build their brand up before they can seriously consider challenging Marvel's superiority. And that'll take time, and a string of successful films.

Just finish up contracts with the successful actors, then try again with a fresh slate. Trying (and failing) to make the DCEU shared universe work is foolish. DC/WB's greed for MCU-level success is blinding them to the success they're capable of achieving.

[Vordan]

I agree with you Ascended. Just to be clear I’m not giving my opinion on what I want, I’m just looking at occurrences that help explain why WBD are acting the way they are. The most obvious route to take would be to either recast Cavill and Affleck within the shared universe and move forward, or to wrap up Aquaman and WW and then reboot. But WBD is doing neither, instead they’ve decided to make a series of baffling choices: Making Keaton the shared universe Batman, letting Pattinson be off on his own where nobody else can benefit from his popularity beyond the Gothamverse Reeves is building, hanging their hat on Ezra Miller to revive their shared universe, kicking Superman out of the shared universe entirely, counting on Supergirl and Batgirl to replace Superman and Batman for a “girl power” Trinity, doing nothing with a popular IP like Green Lantern while green lighting stuff like Wonder Twins, and so on and so forth. There’s a sunk cost fallacy seemingly in play here, with WB feeling like they’ve invested too much in their shared universe to give up, but also not keeping their biggest guns within the shared universe.

Perhaps Zaslov may change the direction, or my guess that this is all a temporary stopgate until a proper reboot with Crisis is correct, but either way I simply don’t see WBD abandoning the shared universe. Too much money is on the table to walk away and Zaslov has signaled that he thinks as much if the reports are accurate.

[Prime]

Yeah, and it ain't happening. What WB/Discovery/AT&T/whoever *want* doesn't amount to anything. What they *have* is a shared universe that nobody likes and don't watch, and stand-alone films that people do.

Everybody wishes they were making MCU money. But as the saying goes, if wishes were horses then poor men would ride.

It's not that DC "can't" build a successful shared universe. It's that the one they built isn't successful, and by all appearances isn't gonna be (outside of the occasional big win like Aquaman or Peacemaker).

They only care about the money, which is right and proper because that's business. Which is why I didn't bother mentioning reviews. But grasping, over and over again, for something they can't catch isn't making them money. It's costing them money.

Better to abandon the DCEU and start over than waste more time and money trying to fix something that, by all accounts, seems unfixable.

Anyone in business is after the money. But anyone in business who's good at the job knows that you have to stop throwing good money after bad, trying to make an investment work that clearly isn't. Maintaining an investment that isn't paying out because you already spent so much money on it is a common mistake in business, but it's a bad practice that always results in losses to the income statement.

Besides, it's damn unlikely DC would generate MCU levels of revenue even if the shared universe suddenly became good. Marvel makes the money they do because they have rock solid brand recognition, trust, and loyalty. DC has the opposite. People don't trust their movies, with good reason, and that means their films will have a lower average gross no matter what. They're gonna have to rebrand, leave all the unpopular things behind, and build their brand up before they can seriously consider challenging Marvel's superiority. And that'll take time, and a string of successful films.

Just finish up contracts with the successful actors, then try again with a fresh slate. Trying (and failing) to make the DCEU shared universe work is foolish. DC/WB's greed for MCU-level success is blinding them to the success they're capable of achieving.

Like always you are right. I swear to God a bunch of money's can run DC better than the idiot suits in WB. The best course of action is to reboot. Flashpoint would have been perfect. And start fresh with another Superman and Batman. Or just leave Batman out of it entirely. They failed beacaue they blew their load wayyyyy to soon. After man of steel they should have done Man Of Tomorrow, a Wonder Woman movie and then BVS. After BVS, instead of going straight to JL they should have done a "World without Superman" series of films introducing the other characters. Flash, Aquaman, another Woman Woman movie in present day and introducing the Green Lanterns. In those movies they should have introduced the Mother Boxes human with Flash, Atlantans with Aquaman and Amazon's with WW.

[Ascended]

I agree with you Ascended. Just to be clear I’m not giving my opinion on what I want, I’m just looking at occurrences that help explain why WBD are acting the way they are.

It's crazy right? Or at least it looks that way to me.

Perhaps Zaslov may change the direction, or my guess that this is all a temporary stopgate until a proper reboot with Crisis is correct, but either way I simply don’t see WBD abandoning the shared universe. Too much money is on the table to walk away and Zaslov has signaled that he thinks as much if the reports are accurate.

No, they won't give up the dream of having their own MCU. Too much money potentially on the table for that, and these corporate guys certainly see no difference between one superhero and another, so if Marvel/Disney can do it, why not them?

They just need to go about it smarter, and give up on the failed experiment that is the DCEU. I don't even want a Crisis type movie to explain the shift. Nobody should spend 100 million to make a movie that just points out how bad the previous movies were, and audiences are already keenly aware of the fact anyway. Just wrap the remaining trilogies that're worth wrapping, with some stand-alone stuff to pad out the schedule while you do it (like The Batman), and then come at it fresh with all new cast and crew.

Whether Discovery is doing that? We'll find out. Most of what I've seen them say doesn't fill me with confidence, as it's the same crap the other people have said when they've come in. Maybe they've said something insightful that I missed? But it's largely all in the execution, and maybe the new people will get it right regardless of whether they build on the DCEU or not.

Like always you are right. I swear to God a bunch of money's can run DC better than the idiot suits in WB. The best course of action is to reboot.

Well, I *think* I'm right. We can point to numbers that support my argument, and there's plenty of general business logic that supports it too. But we're on the outside looking in, and these are industries I'm not familiar with, and every industry has its own quirks and rules only known to insiders. So maybe I'm wrong and building on the DCEU is a smart move.....but looking at the box office? Looking at reviews? I'm hard pressed to see how I'm wrong, but you never know.

I think, one thing with these big execs....they've been doing what they're doing for a long, long time. They forget, or take for granted, a lot of things that're still fresh in the mind of someone with a fairly fresh degree, like me. They've had time to form bad habits. And they see things from a very high perspective. Things look different when you're on the ground, like we are, and I've often found that the perspective of the people on the ground is more honest and reliable than what the suits see; we don't know what we're talking about, as industry outsiders, but our level of engagement lets us see the problems more closely. Everything the exec gets is filtered through layers and layers of bureaucracy, focus groups, market strategists, middle managers trying to make themselves look good, etc. Easy to miss where you went wrong when you're not involved in the day-to-day grind on the floor. In my experience, anyway.

Even if I'm right on the cause of the problems and my solutions are (by pure luck) viable, certainly there's other solutions and approaches just as viable, if not more so (likelier).

[Vakanai]

But Discovery would rather have a shared universe movie that gets mediocre reviews and still clears 1b over a standalone film that gets rave reviews but only clears 700m. Zaslov only cares about the money.

Which is more a testament to the popularity of Joker than indicative of anything else. Discovery clearly agrees with you that the DCEU has been a mess, it just disagrees with you about the direction. No offense but Zaslov could give two shits about your dislike for the shared universe, if they are indeed pivoting back to the DCEU, it’s because like everyone else in Hollywood they’re seeing the profit returns even mediocre MCU films get compared to everything else.

Yeah, that mediocre MCU films get. No one else has pulled off a MCU, and chasing it has only gone badly for everyone else. Yeah, Zaslov doesn't give two shits about my dislike of the shared universe phenomenon, but like you said all Hollywood cares about is profit. Looking over at what the MCU has done doesn't mean **** if no one else can replicate that success. Outside of Aquaman, most of their most successful movies haven't been in the shared universe. Following the thing that hasn't been successful for them "cause Marvel" and ignoring what has worked successfully for them is DC's greatest weakness imo. Maybe one day they'll get that MCU-type success. But why keep making that bet over and over again? Green light Joker sequel, ramp up The Batman universe, and do similar standalone films for other heroes asap and rebuild DC's cache with the general public.

But we're just going to keep getting DCEU 2: The Quest for Marvel Money. I'm just not confident that they will get that right. And even if they do, I'm not sure general audiences are even willing to put in the effort to follow another universe. MCU might have taken up all the room that niche has, and there might not be room for a similar universe. Certainly no other attempts have worked out.

[Vakanai]

700 million for a Batman movie with rave reviews and got a whole month without any competition isn't very good. And Doctor Strange shuts down the Covid argument.

I don't blame it on the movie itself, because I quite liked it. I blame it on the marketing that made it look like The Dark knight all over again

Doesn't the marketing for Marvel movies make them look like every other Marvel movie? So why does it looking kind of like another beloved Batman movie cause it harm?

And over $700 million in a month is somehow not very good? Just because a Batman movie didn't crack a billion in a month everything is looking bad suddenly? It's a reboot, with an actor the fanbase was uncertain about just cause Twilight hate, and 3 hours long, and pulled out early so they could use it to prop up their streaming service, and everyone knew that they could just wait and see it on streaming in a month, and it still made $700 million. That's not a sign that things are bad, that's a damned success story.

[manwhohaseverything]

Marvel has this "this hero is gonna make an appearance or debut" factor going for them,now.They generally are playing to the audience.Wouldn't be surprised if the had hugh jackman back or something like that.Even those who don't know squat or care about the character begins to look the character up just so they can be "in the know".Their universe is very fleshed out and world building they have done is tremendous.

China wants cool action sequences and just enough emotional beats..American wants nostalgia and characters being "authentic" to "source" material(just overall bragging thing.They don't really care,in reality.they watched gotg) .

[DochaDocha]

And over $700 million in a month is somehow not very good? Just because a Batman movie didn't crack a billion in a month everything is looking bad suddenly? It's a reboot, with an actor the fanbase was uncertain about just cause Twilight hate, and 3 hours long, and pulled out early so they could use it to prop up their streaming service, and everyone knew that they could just wait and see it on streaming in a month, and it still made $700 million. That's not a sign that things are bad, that's a damned success story.

I know we're in post-COVID, and CPI conversions aren't 100% appropriate, but Man of Steel's $291 M domestic and $668 M worldwide in 2013 comes out to roughly $359 M and $824 M, respectively, in 2022 dollars. If Man of Steel was disappointing enough that they had to turn on the Bat signal, I'm not sure we can call The Batman's $369 M and $765 M a massive success.

EDIT: On second thought, I forgot to look at the budgets. Man of Steel cost $277 M in 2022 dollars, compared to The Batman's $200 M, so this isn't apples and oranges. Maybe WB just didn't market this movie as hard and are fine with a smaller box office...

[Alpha]

Doesn't the marketing for Marvel movies make them look like every other Marvel movie? So why does it looking kind of like another beloved Batman movie cause it harm?

We've had this discussion elsewhere, but nope. The marketing for Marvel movies mostly has the same "tone" but it always revolves around "something you've never seen before is gonna happen". As do most trailers.

Whereas the trailers for The Batman and even the synopsis made it seem like the same old Batman story (which thankfully it wasn't).

"Batman ventures into Gotham City's underworld when a sadistic killer leaves behind a trail of cryptic clues. As the evidence begins to lead closer to home and the scale of the perpetrator's plans become clear, he must forge new relationships, unmask the culprit and bring justice to the abuse of power and corruption that has long plagued the metropolis."

DC has to learn better marketing with the Batman franchise. The goal isn't to make every film fill like the same thing. It's to show what's different about this one.

764 million with rave reviews and absolutely no competition for a whole month (during spring break) is underwhelming, specially when Doctor Strange is gonna blow right past it with much more divisive reviews just one month later

[Last Son of Krypton]

I know we're in post-COVID, and CPI conversions aren't 100% appropriate, but Man of Steel's $291 M domestic and $668 M worldwide in 2013 comes out to roughly $359 M and $824 M, respectively, in 2022 dollars. If Man of Steel was disappointing enough that they had to turn on the Bat signal, I'm not sure we can call The Batman's $369 M and $765 M a massive success.

Imagine what WB would do if The BM was also viewed as a disappointment. Turn on the Bat-Signal and have Battinson teaming up with Keaton and Affleck in the sequel?

EDIT: On second thought, I forgot to look at the budgets. Man of Steel cost $277 M in 2022 dollars, compared to The Batman's $200 M, so this isn't apples and oranges. Maybe WB just didn't market this movie as hard and are fine with a smaller box office...

Also, MoS earned close to 200M before its release for the products placement. It made most of its budget back without selling a ticket, lol.

[Gaius]

Imagine what WB would do if The BM was also viewed as a disappointment. Turn on the Bat-Signal and have Battinson teaming up with Keaton and Affleck in the sequel?

[JAK]

I agree with you Ascended. Just to be clear I’m not giving my opinion on what I want, I’m just looking at occurrences that help explain why WBD are acting the way they are. The most obvious route to take would be to either recast Cavill and Affleck within the shared universe and move forward, or to wrap up Aquaman and WW and then reboot. But WBD is doing neither, instead they’ve decided to make a series of baffling choices: Making Keaton the shared universe Batman, letting Pattinson be off on his own where nobody else can benefit from his popularity beyond the Gothamverse Reeves is building, hanging their hat on Ezra Miller to revive their shared universe, kicking Superman out of the shared universe entirely, counting on Supergirl and Batgirl to replace Superman and Batman for a “girl power” Trinity, doing nothing with a popular IP like Green Lantern while green lighting stuff like Wonder Twins, and so on and so forth. There’s a sunk cost fallacy seemingly in play here, with WB feeling like they’ve invested too much in their shared universe to give up, but also not keeping their biggest guns within the shared universe.

Perhaps Zaslov may change the direction, or my guess that this is all a temporary stopgate until a proper reboot with Crisis is correct, but either way I simply don’t see WBD abandoning the shared universe. Too much money is on the table to walk away and Zaslov has signaled that he thinks as much if the reports are accurate.

It's rather interesting, looking at DC and WB through the reboot lens. COIE and various other Crises didn't do a fresh start for the whole universe - the New52, either. And WB is kinda doing the same thing, or looking toward that idea.

I agree that they want their own MCU so bad they can taste it. I also know they won't want to put in the work to get there properly.

Just kinda hilarious to me: it doesn't seem to matter who owns or is in charge of WB, they never know what they're doing with these things. Maybe they'll prove me wrong, but the observation is still both sad and hilarious.