DCU Movies

[Frontier]

All due respect to Nolan, who is a God of superhero cinema (and cinema in general) in my book. But after "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you", I don't think he has much of a leg to stand on when it comes to the Zod neck snap.

Oh, I know it's hypocritical, but he also realized that might not go over well as it inevitably did.

Gunn/Safran killed a BatKeaton-lead film written the past year by Christina Hodson (The Flash), it was a Batman Beyond movie (I think to establish Terry McGinnis as the new DCEU Batman taking over Keaton): https://twitter.com/elmayimbe/status...32478596026370

Original source: https://youtu.be/Bzy219GBEjA

They are getting rid of Keaton from everything, I wouldn't be shocked if The Flash's ending get altered too next.

Wasn't Batgirl already Beyond-esque premise wise? Albeit Bruce wouldn't get to mentor her that much from what I heard.

[Yohei72]

Big-budget films have always courted as many demos as possible for profit. Whether they're capitulating to the Bible Belt or China only makes a difference if you're into nationalism.

I’d be equally opposed to appeasing Bible thumpers by blacklisting actors who say anything that offends that group. So nationalism has nothing to do with it. And I don’t see anyone currently doing that in any case, or proposing here that it be done. So I’m addressing the topic at hand.

You seem to conflate “shaping content to appeal to ticket-buying demographics” with “blacklisting artists to appease a dictator,” as if they all obviously come under the same heading of “courting demos.” There is clearly a distinction to be drawn between the two policies.

[Last Son of Krypton]

The more I read about Hamada's decisions the less I understand what he was trying to accomplish.

Like, the movies themselves were good for the most part, but if I had to judge him as the architect of a DC Cinematic Universe...man, what was he thinking? His decisions are even more non-sensical than Snyder's.

Pattinson should've been the only active Bruce Wayne/Batman, I guess. Going with the Batman Beyond route with Keaton down the line is the first thing that make some sense about his involvement in the DCEU because all I heard from The Flash and Batgirl, his real age was never a factor and he was treated as a badass ass-kicking Batman still in his prime thanks to a stunt double half of Keaton's age. Having him retiring for some reason (an injury?) in a Batman Beyond-inspired movie and being replaced by a young new Batman justify picking Keaton instead of just recasting Affleck.

Wasn't Batgirl already Beyond-esque premise wise? Albeit Bruce wouldn't get to mentor her that much from what I heard.

Nah, he wasn't mentoring her at all. What they wrote/filmed and showed at the only test screening the movie had wasn't inspired by Batman Beyond, it was more Batgirl: Year One. Barbara was on her own, BatKeaton didn't wanted her to be a vigilante to not get hurt, he realizes she has potential and end up accepting her as his ally, give her a new suit at the end, and they both jump from a rooftop toward the camera (typical CBM ending, lol).

This part doesn't make sense:



So the decision to reboot or not comes down to the box office performance of Flash and Aquaman 2? Gunn is presenting his slate in some days, a decision would have certainly already been taken by 2024.

I suspect there are a lot of internal politics at play here. It's probably not a coincidence Variety published an article saying Black Adam lost millions of dollars only for Deadline to claim the opposite seemingly using some...let's say "creative accounting" a few hours later and then all this drama happens

If I had to guess, there are some people inside WBD pushing for a full reboot (and presumably recast with cheaper actors) and others who want to continue with Cavill, Gadot, Johnson, etc. These contradictory articles from THR and Deadline are just in-fighting.

A full reboot is a real possibility, I think. Ezra Miller's future as The Flash is uncertain. Who's playing BM in the DCU? If Gadot decides to quit to follow Jenkins, they can recast and reboot because there isn't much left to keep.

[Holt]

The situation with China is further complicated by the fact that they've increasingly wanted to focus more on their domestic market the last decade, which has led to increasingly restricting what can and can't be released there. The film board is basically just looking for excuses not to show stuff they already likely weren't gonna show. If it's wasn't something stupid like an actor showing solidarity towards Tibet or acknowledging the existence of Taiwan, they'd find some other reason to pull it.

Batgirl was almost complete and cancelled after the fact, this is about parting ways with a director before anything was even shot. There's no similarity between these situations other than both movies having female protagonists, and from all we're hearing about these changes, it doesn't seem like only WW will be affected.

It wasn't, but Wonder Woman being announced as cancelled on the heels of Batgirl was always going to run the risk of having that perception. Even though we've since learned Batman and Superman also had films axed due to the new regime, it's still a situation that had the potential to come off looking bad (especially when Zaslav has been criticized in the past for axing a number of female and minority-led productions on HBO Max).

Optics are a thing regardless of whether or not something is strictly, factually true.

[Styles]

[Frontier]

Isn't that kind of fast? Not that I mind.

[Primal Slayer]

Certainly faster than The Batman if i remember correctly

[Dagothoth]

Oh, I know it's hypocritical, but he also realized that might not go over well as it inevitably did.

Wasn't Batgirl already Beyond-esque premise wise? Albeit Bruce wouldn't get to mentor her that much from what I heard.

No

Batgirl was supposed to lead into a status quo where Batman begins working with others again

The implication being that we would have multiple active batfamily members in Gotham at the same time

Even terry would likely have been active at the same time as Bruce

[Dagothoth]

Okay, this is the first I'm hearing of a COIE movie. I always thought Flashpoint was going to be Hamada's big reset.

Funnily enough, COIE isn't something you can just randomly put together to do a reboot. It's something you build up to. People tend to forget that because COIE is so strongly associated with continuity-rebooting. The actual COIE story was the culmination of decades of DC storytelling. The Multiverse-hopping and team-ups aren't really the focus of the story - it's about all of DC's heroes coming together to deal with one existential threat (and most of those heroes are familiar ones from the then-mainstream earth).

The Arrowverse recently did a COIE adaptation and it was a culmination of the stories of their characters across the shows - particularly Oliver Queen and Barry Allen. Yes, there were cameos from 'legacy' characters/actors but those weren't the core focus.

My point is that you need to have built something before you do COIE. How did Hamada, if this is true, propose to do COIE without a cohesive universe to start with? COIE requires a lot more than just having Affleck and Keaton team-up or Lynda Carter and (CGI) Christopher Reeve cameos!

From what I gather

Flashpoint was supposed to lead into COIE by stranding affleck Batman in the multiverse, while setting up a long term status quo shift that would have lived by COIE if it was well-received

The post-flashpoint dc universe would have been a mess of nostalgic and snyder iconography that would have paradoxically have allowed filmmakers to have more freedom

One of the earliest rumors being that a version of superman(implied to be Reeves or Henry) would go into retirement in Smallville to raise his family with lois while supergirl took his place

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Patty Jenkins reminds me of the Tim Burton Batman movies. Burton directed the first Batman to commercial success and was given free reign in the sequel. When the sequel was less successful, the WB wanted a different direction and Burton wanted to make more personal movies with less oversight.

After Wonder Woman: 1984, I think the WB has valid reasons to ask for changes to Jenkin's proposed WW3 treatment.

I feel the same. Patty Jenkins made a pretty good origin film with a lot of the classic Wonder Woman stuff and it worked for what it needed to be imo. But the sequel was a complete disaster imo. And I don't even mean a Batman Returns "it was a little too dark for the kids at the time" mess. I mean it was just a bad film in a vacuum. I wouldn't give her free reign if I was trying to build my universe after that. And as much as there is validity in giving creators room sometimes, the universe that actually worked had Feige as overlord to make sure that things were all uniform enough and didn't get too off the rails. Wonder Woman 1984 never happens with him.

[Holt]

Hollywood Reporter update on the situation:

Mystery Man Revealed

Man of Steel 2 has stalled out. It’s Kal-el with Kryptonite ankle bracelets at this point. Not going anywhere. But it was on the move ahead of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s arrival at DC, even though it’s unclear how far that specific incarnation would have gotten.

Sources tell us Steven Knight, the creator of TV series Peaky Blinders and See and writer of movies Spencer and Eastern Promises, penned a treatment for the project in the fall. Unfortunately, it didn’t thrill Warner executives, who gave notes. (There's that word again.)

Before things could go to the next level, which may or may not have included hiring another writer given Knight’s very busy schedule, Gunn and Safran were hired, and development promptly ended.

Crisis on Infinite Supermans

Just staying on topic of the dream to bring back Henry Cavill: Dwayne Johnson wasn’t the only one who had that idea. Former head of DC Films Walter Hamada was also working on a long-range plan to return Superman, and Cavill, to the DC cinematic fold.

Sources tell us that cameos in forthcoming DC movies of next year would have breadcrumbed to a giant tentpole movie inspired by the now-classic Crisis on Infinite Earth comics of the 1980s. That comics mini-series featured multiple timelines and heroes from other dimensional Earths and, just as the Flash movie was returning Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck in their Batman incarnations, this new movie project would have returned Cavill as Supes.

Johnson, however, had his own plans and muscled his own Cavill return.

The Great Beyond

In the aftermath of the news of Wonder Woman 3 hitting the skids, several items have popped up (here and here) about how there was a plan to spin off a Batman Beyond movie from Flash and that Christina Hodson, already in the (old) DC fold thanks to writing Batgirl and Flash, was penning it. Here are a few more details:

Hodson pitched her take, which had executives excited, and had actually commenced writing…when, about two weeks after the hires of Gunn and Safran, she was told to stop.

Some Batfans’s hearts may break when we tell them the project was looking to resuscitate a romance between a Michael Keaton Batman and Catwoman (would Michelle Pfeiffer have returned? Who knows?)

But as tough as some of this may sound to some fans, keep in mind that Gunn and Safran can and will resuscitate some of these heroes.

They know, and may even love, Terry McGinnis. They may bring back Deathstoke, who was a villain in the Ben Affleck-Geoff Johns-written Batman movie when Affleck was going to star and direct it.

Maybe a John Stewart Green Lantern movie will finally happen. And you know Superman and Wonder Woman will return in one shape or another. Whether Cavill and Gadot come back, however, will be up to Gunn and Safran.

So Cavill was planned to return in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

It would be hilarious to me if the DC movie universe actually repeats the mistake of the original "Crisis" - where they "reboot the DCU" and rebuild some stuff from scratch, while also trying to keep a lot of the history from the pre-boot, (the successful stuff) thus making their shared universe a schittshow from jump.

I mean, honestly, I don’t know if there’s that much of a chance of Gunn actually going through with a reboot. There’s one kinda big glaring thing people are forgetting and it’s that Gunn himself has projects both past and upcoming set in THIS canon. I mean, the man literally announced Peacemaker season 2 HIMSELF at Comic-Con.

On top of that, if it’s true that it was indeed Jenkins who walked away from Wonder Woman 3, then I don’t know if we can say that Gadot is done. It actually would make her cryptic tweet the day before the WW3 news make MORE sense since it seemed like SHE was staying on (the “I can’t wait to share it with you” part), even though it made it seem like something has changed. So, obviously, them needing to get a new director and new script would be a huge change, even if the actress herself is staying on.

[Dagothoth]

Here is the philosophy that I think we are gonna be seeing moving forward


Same faces…different universe


The next Henry Superman movie, if it happens, will be set in its own continuity that belongs to Gunn, ditto to Wonder Woman and anyone else


Just as Superman and Lois isn’t set in the arrowverse

[Vordan]

Hollywood Reporter update on the situation:



So Cavill was planned to return in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I doubt that would have actually happened. They bring him back for what? A brief cameo before they hard rebooted the universe? And if the intention was to work with Cavill, why deny him a chance at another solo? This just reads like Hamada trying to cover for himself to be frank. They might have made Cavill an offer for CoIE but I bet it wouldn’t have been what he wanted and he wouldn’t have returned.

As for the rest it looks like everything is on pause for the moment until next week when Gunn & Safran unveil their plan to Zaslav.

[Serpico Jones]

Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer were going to reunite for Batman Beyond.

Seems like people are coming out of the woodwork to bury Gunn and Safran.