Originally Posted by
Doctor Know
Firing Snyder was a mistake. For better or worse, he was the captain of the ship and had a roadmap of where he wanted things to go. WB should've just hired more directors/producers to work with his ideas and eventually replace him. Rather than leave their IP without a vision or a director for 6 years.
Look at the calendar of events.
2017: Wonder Woman comes out to praise and box office success. Z. Snyder having ghost directed portions of the movie, with Patty Jenkins as lead director.
Snyder is fired before he can put together his JL movie. Despite it being nearly finished shooting. Geoff Johns and Jon Berg swoop in and convince TPTB that DC needs to copycat the MCU. Whedon is brought in to reshoot nearly half a completed movie and he turns Snyder's JL into a clone of Avengers 1. To poor reviews and poor box office. Johns and Berg are fired soon after by the studio. My guess is they promised big returns on going lighter and cloning the MCU. Not to absolve the WB executives who mandated the film be under 2 hours (including end credits) and rushing it out the door to secure quarterly bonuses.
2018: Aquaman comes out. The last film Z. Snyder has anything to do with. It makes a billion at the BO. WB is feeling good.
2019: Shazam comes out. A modest success at the BO and popular with critics. Lost in the shuffle of Captain Marvel and Avengers Endgame coming out in the same Spring/Summer season.
2020: Birds of Prey comes out and loses money. With Sonic the Hedgehog beating it at the BO, before global lockdowns took effect. WW84 comes out to middling reviews and bombs at the BO. You can blame covid, I'm sure lots of people do for the film's failure. But a lot of people really didn't jive with what WW84 was selling.
WB adds to the fire by submitting both BOP and WW84 for Oscar nominations. BOP for VFX and Make-up, WW84 for every category available. Neither was selected for nomination.
2021: After years of WB stating that Snyder's version didn't exist, and that the theatrical cut of the movie was the ONLY version of the film. This sentiment flowing into other WB productions (Animaniacs and Harley Quinn animated series). And after the executives at WB deliberately deleting all the footage Snyder had filmed. WB's then parent company AT&T gives the green light to release the Snydercut. Z. Snyder having saved copies of his film on hard drives he took home after being fired back in 2017.The film comes out on streaming and people love it. The fans, the general audience, the critics and even rival movie directors like the Russo Brothers (Cap America Civil War, Avengers 3+4).
Of the 3 JL type properties that came out in 2021: Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy (cancelled shortly after it was released), Marvel's the Eternals (flop and rotten critic scores) and Z. Snyder's Justice League. Only Justice League was received with positive reviews from fans and critics. WB has what everyone else wishes they had. The genuine article. The Real McCoy. And they decided to do nothing with it. They wasted a moment and opportunity. A "cul de sac going nowhere". One executive put it.
James Gunn's The Suicide Squad comes out and it flops hard. It's a better movie that the 2016 version, but no one went to see it. Speaking personally, I noticed that a lot of people who watched the first one were big fans of the Fast and Furious movies. When the second one came out, they couldn't be bothered. There was an audience there that WB lost the second time around.
2022: Under new management. The Batgirl film nobody asked for gets the axe before release. A tax write off. Even though the film was completed.
Ezra Miller makes his transformation from Flash into Reverse Flash, with a string of various crimes and felonies. WB gets him under control and puts out very little information regarding his status. All the while hyping that Flash movie he's in. They've invested a lot of money into this project. They've got HIGH HOPES it'll pull early DCEU BO numbers.
Dwayne Johnson tries to fill the void left when they fired Z. Snyder. To reshape the DCU movies in his own image, with his own production company. Ambitious plan, and kudos to him for trying. WB left leadership of the films in a vacuum for 5 years at this point. Black Adam underperforms and new management wants a reset of everything. Not that I blame Zaslav. See above list and you can see where things went wrong.
2023: James Gunn is the new head of DC films. He's got his own plans, and they don't involve the Lame duck Flash movie, Aquaman 2 and possibly Blue Beetle movies. The announcement that all films in 2023 don't matter, certainly poured artic water on a struggling brand.
Shazam 2 comes out to middling and box office woes.
Flash is now looking to bomb and all the people who hyped up this film have tough questions waiting for them. Maybe not so tough, since the film universe is being rebooted.
As we saw with the Disney era Star Wars movies, and by JJ Abrams own admission. It really pays to have a plan when you do these multi-movie projects. Looking at the DC films after Z. Snyder left, I get the sense that WB wasn't laser focused on making money. The films they greenlit and funded all run counter to that idea. I imagine some suit at the studio thought all they had to do was just put out a comic book property, any comic book property and it would sell like hot cakes. Oh how wrong they were. Especially in a time when the MCU is losing steam and also having critics and BO troubles. Now should be the time to capitalize on it, but WB is just unprepared to do that. It's a shame and a real f*cking waste!