Is DC even going to try to compete with Marvel on the big screen?

[Flashpoint]

Nolan has made it clear that his Batman won't be in the Justice League. But his Batman is far and away different from Burton's Batman. Just because Nolan's trilogy ends, doesn't mean that's the end of Batman on the big screen.

Correct. If there is ultimately a Justice League movie in the next 5 years, Batman will almost certainly be in it.

[FIFTY-TWO (52)]

Which is already happening: Dark Knight Rises this year, followed by Man Of Steel next year.

Industry buzz on both pics is good. WB knows this and is doing their level best to nurture and support MOS; they are doing everything they can to avoid another SR or GL box office result.

The question is...what comes after that? JL? GL2? Flash? Or just more Batman and Superman?

My money is on either GL2 or Flash as a lead-in to JL.

My money would be on a Batman/Superman movie. It's how DC grew their shared animated universe on TV for 10 years. First it was Batman, followed by Superman, followed by Superman/Batman team-ups, and then the Justice League.

[Flashpoint]

My money would be on a Batman/Superman movie. It's how DC grew their shared animated universe on TV for 10 years. First it was Batman, followed by Superman, followed by Superman/Batman team-ups, and then the Justice League.

Nope. That idea got mothballed years ago. Not saying they should or shouldn't do it; just that they gave up on the idea after the team who pushed the idea couldn't get a greenlight for it.

[Will.S]

Except they didn't. Daredevil and Elektra didn't work. Ghost Rider didn't work. No Punisher movie has ever worked. The FF didn't work. Marvel trilogies don't seem to work.

"Work" in what way?

[Lee-Sensei]

So, genius, how do you make a Flash movie without his costume? It's no more ridiculous than what Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor wear.

Captain America? Yes. Iron Man and Thor? Not really. Unless you consider armor ridiculous.

[RoughNTumble]

Gosh I hate it when people split apart posts to respond to them, but this is so lengthy I feel like it’s necessary.

Nolan has turned Batman into a bigger success than he ever was before bringing in not only the dollars, but also praise from serious movie critics and Oscar awards for acting. The trick for WB now is to reboot the Batman franchise within the context of a shared universe (which is thankfully possible now that the sole obstacle to it, Christopher Nolan, is no longer directing Batman). WB is trying to figure out how to include Batman in the Justice League without killing the success Nolan brought them with his take on Batman.

This is one of the trickiest aspects of the justice league movie—how does batman fit in? You’ve got an alien who has the powers of a god, a cosmic cop, an Amazonian warrior, a man who is part machine, a man who can move so fast that time might as well be standing still, etc. You’d almost have to have batman be an exclusively behind-the-scenes character.

Batman works as a member of the JL in the comics because the campy nature of comics allow for him to fit in while the reader still takes it seriously. Let’s face it, Batman at WB right now is all about nolan’s dark/realistic vision for the character, and if they still don’t even know how to make robin—who is just another plain old human being—work on screen, how is it going to look when he’s standing next to the rest of the very colorful justice league? It’s a really tough sell and though I do believe it could be possible, it’s a really long shot, and part of the reason I think JL is the hardest DC concept to put on screen (of the mainstream ones obviously.)

It is all up in the air. They could decide that because of GL's box office that it is too big a risk and just back-burner JL again in favor of a Batman reboot. But the comics almost always follow the film and that's because the movies make so much more money. (More on that last detail in the next portion of my post.) Ergo, what we're seeing with the relatively new DC Entertainment and the New 52 reflects key elements (not all, but many) of what WB would like to exploit in TV and film. Marvel has done this for over a decade with their comics reflecting changes made to the movies, especially costumes. Nick Fury is apparently now going to have a black son in their main universe to reflect Jackson's movie version of Nick Fury.

Look for clues to what WB wants to do in the DCnU relaunch. Some elements of what WB would like to see will be reflected in the comics for marketing purposes (which is also what they did when they changed Superman's costume in 1997 to match Tim Burton's aborted film).

I think marvel is much more heavily invested in creating synergy between the movies and comics than DC has a history of doing. Yeah, obviously some of the aesthetic changes of the new 52 could be hints, but from everything we’ve heard from the creators, they’ve had a lot of say in what happens. Grant Morrison on action comics for instance said DC let him do whatever he wanted with the character, he just had to end up with the armored costume.

If they were really aiming for synergy, I think you’d see more Nolan influence in the batman comics with the reboot, and that isn’t the case. Morrison put in a scarred joker because he was apparently a fan of the movie, but that isn’t even something that carried over in the reboot.

[RoughNTumble]

As far as casting Wonder Woman...it's a different regime at WB now. More importantly, Marvel has set the pace as far as superheroes go. You'll get a decent actress this time and most likely an unknown like Christopher Reeve was.

I don’t think it’s marvel that set the pace for that, it was the big name cast of the original donner movie. That is what established the popularity of having big name actors to portray these very big mythologies. That didn’t stop WB from casting a bunch of very young actors for justice league mortal, some of them with questionable talent.

As for Bale, the new Batman actor who fits in with a potential shared DC movie universe can easily transition to work with whatever director they choose to reboot the individual Batman films.

That’s my problem with the shared universe approach. I want to see WB picking the best pitches, not picking workhorses to carry out their studio vision, a vision that in the last couple years has appeared to be a lot like marvel’s. By far the highest quality superhero movies we’ve gotten have come from people passionate about their vision of whatever character they’re working on.

I’m happy for the marvel fans that are pleased with marvel’s movieverse so far, and I’ve enjoyed the movies myself, but only because they aren’t characters that I really care about like DC’s are. I would overall be very unhappy with the quality of product were DC’s heroes to switch places with marvel’s.

The central quandary WB is wrestling with now is whether or not to go ahead with Justice League, and if so, how to do it successfully. If their team can figure out a way to do it, they absolutely will. Why? $$$$--and also to counter criticism rife in Hollywood and amongst the public that they "can't" do it. Corporate executives are viciously competitive and the moment you tell them they can't do something or that only Marvel can do it, you're pretty much daring them to do it. Most of the time, studio egos will take that bet if only to prove their detractors wrong and win the fight.

I think they’re already doing this by making higher quality movies than marvel. You talk about the big bucks that the studios are after, but I’m telling you, there’s no way avengers comes close to the dark knight rises’ worldwide gross. You make the big bucks by making the best movies, and the best movies come from the best directors, and the best directors aren’t going to thrive under studio mandate.

Robinov wants a Justice League movie. He has gone to his team to figure out *if* it can be done. Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns have input into that; they're on WB's team. I don't believe for a second that any of them don't think they can do it; they're just trying to figure out how to do for DC what Marvel has done for themselves. More importantly, the L.A. Times has done very high profile interviews with Robinov, Nelson and Johns who have gone on record saying they want to do more DC movies and have success like Marvel has.

I don't see any of these people quitting or giving up. They want this and they are trying their damnedest to figure out how to pull it off.

I really hope the question they’re asking themselves after more careful consideration is—should this be done?

The original Justice League script you're referring to was developed pre-RDJ Iron Man and pre-Marvel shared universe movies. Marvel changed the game. They have had huge box office hits scoring hundreds of millions of dollars with their shared universe movies. Now WB wants in on that action. The JLA Mortal project was created in 2007 and died in 2008 right before Iron Man came out. RDJ's unprecedented success in the role, all the money Marvel made and how audiences bought into the shared universe concept changed everything.

I don’t think you would see much of a difference in box office totals had the movies been in separate universes. In fact, I think captain America and thor would have done even better had they been allowed to have their own unique tone and vision. There’s already enough criticism about the similarities between comic movies that it isn’t going to help avoid audience fatigue by giving them all the same tone and interlacing plot lines. One of the biggest flaws of Iron man 2 is the increase in screen time that avengers references saw in place of focusing on making iron man as interesting as possible.

You can see from any site that gauges audience reaction to movies that there was somewhat less excitement overall from 2011’s superhero offerings.

[FIFTY-TWO (52)]

Captain America? Yes. Iron Man and Thor? Not really. Unless you consider armor ridiculous.

Thor looks like something out of a Renaissance Fair, and Iron Man is basically a robot. They're no less garish than Flash. Really, in a Flash movie, all he needs to start out with is a specialized track and field outfit and explain how it makes him resistant to friction. It's not that hard.

[RoughNTumble]

Bad argument. The reality is, if JL Mortal had come out and bombed, it would be treated like Singer's Superman and promptly buried forever.

Now, if it had been a hit? You've got a different set of circumstances. Then, yes, they would've done like Fox did with Daredevil (and hoped to do with FF): spinoff movies (like Elektra and the aborted Silver Surfer project). But the fact is, it never happened.

Robinov is the head of Warner Brothers with, as L.A. Times stated, "ultimate say" to make a movie happen. And he shocked everyone by going on record with his desire to do a Justice League movie. You're using what-ifs to make your case instead of using the facts--and the fact is, Robinov wants this. His team of executives is trying to figure out how to do this. The only way it's not happening is if they all put their heads together and come to the same conclusion, "No, Jeff, this isn't working. We can't find a way to do this that would guarantee minimal success. Let it go and just stick with Superman and Batman."

My point wasn’t to debate the hypothetical success of a movie that never was, but to criticize the processes that would become necessary were a shared universe to actually occur. It would be mandate before ideas and creativity. The more freedom the cast and crew have, the more likely you are to end up with a better product.

And yes, robinov wants a justice league movie, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, or that they haven’t already uncovered a superior way of approaching these movies with the dark knight trilogy.

Using the what-ifs you're using, Marvel would have stopped trying to get movies made 20 years ago after FOUR humongous bombs and colossal failures: Lundgren's Punisher, Corman's FF, Salinger's Captain America, James Cameron's Spider-Man. They didn't. They kept trying.

If your case is that a Justice League movie can't be done for the reasons you've stated or in the way you've stated, that isn't going to stop them from trying. Just the opposite--and Marvel's continuing success as a box office juggernaut is why. As a matter of fact, the more Marvel movies we get? The more WB (and others) get green with envy and try to copy what they've done.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, only that individual universes are superior in almost every way to a shared universe.

The Avengers movie and its likely success is going to embolden WB to make Justice League, not dissuade them. They certainly won't do Wonder Woman first; it's too risky and they've never been able to figure out how to do it. Flash has a very outside chance as an Iron Man/Thor/Cap-type of bridge to a Justice League movie *if* WB decides to follow the Marvel model. There is a very credible argument to be made for a Flash movie as a lead-in to a JL movie instead of using GL2 for that.

WB may have put on a happy face for green lantern press, but the critical reception and the box office numbers say that there is little to no chance we’ll see green lantern 2. Had the original been a success, I’m sure we would have heard all about flash by now, but unfortunately it wasn’t. We’ve heard nothing but silence from WB since GL’s release, and you have to wonder if maybe some strategies aren’t changing behind the scenes. Production should be gearing up right now for a 2014 DC movie, yet we’ve heard nothing at all.

But the only way it's going to be WW is if Nicholas Refn has a huge box office hit with his next film and then champions his idea for a WW project. That's the only real shot WW has right now; it's probably going to be GL2 or Flash.

I don’t believe memento or insomnia were huge box office hits, though I could be wrong.

[RoughNTumble]

You are dead wrong on Wonder Woman. History itself proves you wrong.

Joel Silver has fought valiantly to try and get WW made for over a decade, if not more. The list of directors who want to work on WW is probably in the single digits--and most of them are men who don't hold exactly enlightened views on sexy female leads. Sexism and misogyny are rife in Hollywood and claiming otherwise is delusional. Yes, there are exceptions to this. But the cold hard truth is that female-led action pics & superhero pics have a pretty bad history on the silver screen. People need to stop pointing at Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton, Milla Jovovich and Angelina Jolie and claiming it's easy to make a good WW movie. Weaver and Hamilton aren't doing summer blockbusters anymore. Jovovich is stuck in the Resident Evil ghetto and those films don't do Marvel movie numbers. Jolie is pushing 40 and wants to direct and act in dramas. Those aren't stellar cases for a WW movie.

I wasn’t talking about the difficulty in getting a movie greenlit, I was referring to the difficulty in producing something classic on screen. A female heroine has been done successfully before with the examples you’ve mentioned, and so has greek mythology, but a superhero team has never been done before the avengers. And I would argue that avengers is probably going to be fun, but people won’t remember it over movies like the dark knight.

Failed movies don't kill popular properties. They can and sometimes do kill the careers of those who star in them. But DC characters aren't forever doomed to never be box office hits because some movies fail. If that were the case, then someone tell Joel Schumacher and George Clooney that they killed the Batman movie business forever. Last time I checked? They hadn't.
Batman are superman are more resilient, but give us a goofy aquaman, wonder woman, and martian manhunter on screen, and I’d be surprised if they ever get their own movies. I’d be surprised if we see another green lantern movie in the next 20 years.

[RoughNTumble]

WB isn't going to do these movies if they aren't tentpoles and that's because they have profit goals set for them that they have to meet. You meet your projected profits by creating blockbusters with tons of ancillary merchandise, licensing, VOD and, yes, a shrinking DVD market that is still part of the profit picture. You want small and intimate superhero movies? Try telling Disney and Marvel that; it is so not going to happen.

Tentpoles aren’t the only movies that are profitable. Profit margin is the most important aspect. A 10 million dollar movie that makes 100 million at the box office Is a bigger success than say, green lantern, and far less of a risk.

If you don’t want audiences to get sick of superhero movies, you have to embrace their versatility and let them naturally branch out into different genres.

Marvel's newfound success as a box office juggernaut in the past decade has turned summer blockbusters on their head by making superhero movies a permanent part of the movie business model. In a way, Marvel is a victim of its own success. It would be very difficult, if not impossible to make a film like 1998's Blade now. Way too much is riding on superhero movies. Hollywood has seen what future cash cows can be made into movie theater hamburgers and they are comic book superheroes. Now, you'll get your occasional Vertigo pic like V For Vendetta, A History Of Violence or Road To Perdition--but those are prestige projects with cult favorites or literary graphic novels.

If you want to ever see a Green Arrow movie or a Booster Gold movie? Make sure to support the new GA and Booster TV series that are on their way and hope they're big hits. If they are, then they'll probably move up on the list of new products that will eventually get shoved into theaters for the masses.

But from here on out, it's going to usually be big budgets for superhero flicks with tons of merchandise on the side. Love it or hate it, DC and Marvel movies are just like the comic books: it's all about the money.

I personally have zero interest in seeing a tv show featuring DC characters, unless you’re talking a big budget HBO one, which would only happen If it were something like batman, who belongs on the silver screen.

I reject the notion that tv and tent pole are the only two options for superheroes. That attitude is going to pigeonhole the genre and burn it out very quickly.

[Alex Decay]

However, WB is keeping him involved in an advisory role as to story direction for DC films which I find fascinating in several ways. It's very intriguing that he actually liked David Goyer's idea for Superman and joined in co-writing the screenplay even after his hated-by-fans' statement that his Batman would never, ever be in a shared DC movie universe. That tells me he's not totally opposed to more fantastic superheroes. He probably just didn't want *his* Batman story to get derailed or overcome by shared universe plotlines (for which I don't blame him).

What I find most fascinating is that he has agreed to advise WB on DC movies while shepherding a truly fantastic character like Superman. Given Nolan's obvious credibility as one of the best storytellers in Hollywood, this bodes well for future DC movies.

Now that Nolan is no longer directing superhero movies himself, it frees up WB to pursue its own strategy for a shared movie universe if they want to. And that's the kicker: IF they want to. It sure looks like they do--and that gives me hope, a great deal of hope.

Where has Christopher Nolan agreed to shepherd all of DC's superhero movies?

[Lee-Sensei]

Thor looks like something out of a Renaissance Fair, and Iron Man is basically a robot. They're no less garish than Flash. Really, in a Flash movie, all he needs to start out with is a specialized track and field outfit and explain how it makes him resistant to friction. It's not that hard.

They don't look as ridiculous as other costumes.

Thor looks like a viking. Iron Man looks like a robot. Neither look ridiculous. If they had gone with Thors original costume I'd agree with you. But not the one in the movie.

[NamorsTrident]

I gave my interpretation of the actor's comments, and we know that Hawkeye isn't the draw of Avengers, and Renner notes that he spent little time with the main actors.

Which tells you next to nothing about his screen time. Nick Fury and Hill probably didn't spend as much time with IronMan, Thor, Cap, and Hulk either but we know they have parts to play in this film as well. Your reaching.

Your comment was that DC fans were delusional in their thinking about what could work for a DC movie.
Do you know what "delusional" means?
And considering that the Dark Knight transcended the way CBM's are made and viewed, I'd say DC fans can hold onto that forever.

No, it wasn't you assumed that to be so. I already posted what the delusional comment was towards. You are just being defensive because Marvel is kick DC A&^ in the film department.

You keep thinking that. Dark Knight wasn't without it's flaws and DC's one good film compared to several good Marvels means close to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

So, genius, how do you make a Flash movie without his costume? It's no more ridiculous than what Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor wear.

That's just it you don't Einstein. The costume would probably have to be updated for it ever to be functional.

Ironman and Thor don't wear costumes in their films. Cap's works do to it being modernized to fit his military background. The current Cap suit isn't the greatest thing ever but even that will work because of Cap having a successful film before the new costume debts.

I guess it's a good thing he was brilliant in the film.

Still doesn't change the fact that his death brought more viewers. That's not a sign of true quality.

[NamorsTrident]

And Britney Spears made more money than U2 at the height of her career. It doesn't mean she produced anything of quality. And when it comes to quality, those movies I mentioned are just as bad as these you've mentioned. They just cost more money and were flashier.

Your argument falls apart with the fact that those movies would have sold as many tickets if the movies actually sucked as bad as you say. They sure wouldn't have made more money then the movies I mentioned if they where better either.

Except they didn't. Daredevil and Elektra didn't work. Ghost Rider didn't work. No Punisher movie has ever worked. The FF didn't work. Marvel trilogies don't seem to work.

If Daredevil didn't work there would not have been an Elektra. Elektra didn't work but neither did Steel. If Ghost Rider didn't work there would not have been a Ghost Rider 2. FF also got a squeal there smarty. Movie executes don't waste money on things that don't work. Something about loosing money on lost causes is off putting. You know sorta like the idea of Green Lantern 2.

And they will continue to do so, as they should.

Probably will and while they do Marvel will continue to further expanding it's brand

Oh yeah, let's pretend like WB/DC hasn't made films like Constantine, V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Red, The Road to Perdition, A History of Violence, The Losers, etc.

All those movies were terrible and they aren't related to the same continuity we are talking about. Why bring up bad films that have nothing to do with what we are discussing to "help" your argument? Makes you look silly.

There's nothing absolute or right about anything you're saying.

You Mad ?