James Gunn has been fired from the DC cinematic universe reboot. So who knows what direction they will take it without Gunn’s long-term plans.
The new Warner Brothers doesn’t know who they are going to be yet, and considering the moron in charge, the whole thing may inevitably collapse and DC would need to go begging for a new home.
Sadly it was the only thing interesting thing in superheroes nowadays, most of their shows were adult, had complex themes and often dealt with real subjects. Then again it is ran my a Trump Flunky from that sort of family, so the themes of racism and rise of the far right might a reason why the likes of Gunn is gone. They might well get rid of John Oliver too (he covered Skydance recently too), they fired people at CBS news because they aretrying to go in the direction of the Republicans.
Here’s hoping the AI accountancy doom-loop which Oracle is heavily leverage on dooms this company, and its up for sale soon.
While political motivations could be a thing, could be anything, could be things like Supergirl failing too. That’s about the only non-critically liked thing they did recently, and I have enjoyed the DCU. I suppose it will be back to the boom-bang fights of stripey dude versus green roidy dude now, answering the question: “who would win between whatshisface and thingamigjig?”
It might be worth listing out the films shows which did get made, and if there’s any left.
Pre-DCU2/crossover/connected: The Batman, Peacemaker Season 1, Joker, The suicide squad (I’m not sure if all of these are, Joker specifically, and The Batman is there because they were doing number 2).
DCU-2: Peacemaker - Season 2, Superman, Creature Commandos, Supergirl, Lanterns, Krypo saves the day, Clayface.
Upcoming, possibly cancelled: Man of tomorrow, The people vs gorilla grodd, Creature commandos - Season 2, others, too.
It was still dull. Superman? Meh. Supergirl? Meh. I have yet to see Clayface.
Apparently every time we get a Supergirl, it’s time to reset the universe. We just had one in the Flash movie.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
How do you imagine that DC might “need to go begging for a new home?” DC Comics is probably one of the most valuable franchises owned by Warner Bros (along with, perhaps, The Lego Movie and the Harry Potter films).
Oh, they’re staying put. I was commenting more on the change in leadership.
Whatever else is true, they have many of the most iconic, recognizable fictional characters around. But that hasn’t translated into the sort of success you would think.
While it is not solely the fault of the folks up top, that’s the lowest hanging fruit. It seems like every time there’s going to be any stability to build a foundation to develop movies, TV series, etc, there’s a shakeup in ownership or in the C-suite, and everything changes again. And while that may not be too terrible for standalone movies, developing a recognized and coherent brand around a concept (Superheroes! Princesses! Whatever!) requires a bit more stability and continuity.
The only constant at Warner seems to be replacing the owner or CEO who then replaces the notional person(s) in charge of DC every 4 or 5 years when the last one fails to produce immediate and sufficiently big results, i.e. new boss same as the old boss. But, as they say, it rolls downhill. Always
Thanks. My post was in response to @GuanoLad, who said that “considering the moron in charge, the whole thing may inevitably collapse and DC would need to go begging for a new home.” That’s what sounded unlikely to me.
Yeah, few companies give up recognizable IP these days. Not the potentially big ticket stuff and not without getting paid for it.
If the rapidly revolving door at the top of Warner is all about instant low cost high profit results, they may well in effect prevent DC from delivering anything. Which will of course diminish their brand value over time.
If one of the future CEOs / owners is a true asset stripper, they’ll destroy WB altogether and dump DC at what will amount to a fire sale versus what they paid for it way back when as viewed from then. that’d be DC begging for a new home with anyone who’ll invest in actually delivering their branded products, not talking about them.
I suspect that is the scenario @GuanoLad was envisioning. It’s certainly happened to many other media properties. And is especially likely with trump-adjacent managements / ownerships.
Throwing weird things at the wall and hoping something sticks was never going to end up with a coherent cinematic universe, which is the main thing WB and DC want out of this. If they were serious about this they need to stop throwing out stand alone movies and put some serious effort into building a coherent set of properties. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman are your starting point. Flash, Green Arrow and Green Lantern should follow. Frankly its way too late at this point to start, unless they wait about a decade. I loved the new Batman, and the Penguin show tied to it, I loved Creature Commandos, and Peacemaker, and Superman and Lanterns and Clayface… but absolutely none of those belong in the same shared universe as the others.
The TV shows were pretty good, though.
I thought the Snyder version of the DCU got a lot longer than that. Orrr ammm IIII jjjusssttt thinnking of his sloooowww mo movies? Which are four hours long? Seemed like ages. Maybe it was only five years.
The different era kind of blend into each other. “Man of Steel” was 2013 and the first cut of Justice League was 2017, which essentially was when he was out. So, more or less 4 years.
Though other stuff, like Aquaman and its sequel, the Wonder Woman sequel, and the Snyder cut came out over the years as well, leaving the fanboys each time to clamor for his return.
Gunn and Safran took over about 4 years ago. In between Snyder and Gunn, they put Walter Hamada in charge. I didn’t realize it really was almost exactly 4 year runs but it’s almost been like clockwork for the last several cycles. And each time, dealing with movies already in the development pipeline while trying simultaneously to start new projects. And we see the disjointed mess as a result.
The new owners are mostly, or entirely, David Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison. The latter made his enormous fortune through Oracle Software. He’s now bankrolling his son’s ambitions for Hollywood. That started with producing movies under the Skydance Productions banner, and then working with Paramount before acquiring it. And now of course they’ve acquired Warner Bros Discovery.
I did see The Flash movie and liked it…except for the awful and forced cameo scenes near the end.
Almost ruined the movie, which had been very fun up to that point.
I enjoyed it as well, mainly due to the story being a classic Flash story. My biggest issue was the CGI being terrible.
I took the likes of Shazam (2019) and Shazam 2 (2023), Wonder woman (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), Aquaman and the lost kingdom (202) as part of that actual universe, perhaps it was because Snyder wasn’t in charge, but it was the same continium, same actors, same set. So that universe got 10 years even if the people in charge only got 4-5 each.
Those babies were so fake.
It was a funny scene.