1. The Studio's Reluctance To Do More
Even though Warner Bros. has owned DC for decades, they haven't done much outside of Superman and Batman in the film medium. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense for them to do that since those two characters are the most recognizable superheroes of all-time. Unfortunately for DC comic fans, the studio's reluctance to pursue other projects may be the biggest roadblock to getting a Justice League film in theaters. Movies like
Wonder Womanhave frustratingly been stuck in development hell for years while Marvel is bringing
Guardians of the Galaxy to theaters next year. WB's first real attempt to break out of their Superman/Batman comfort zone was 2011's disastrous flop
Green Lantern. Ravaged by critics and rejected by the fans, the $300 million investment was a major loss for the studio. Its failings more than likely raised a few red flags and studio executives became hesitant to produce other "second-tier" DC films. I'm sure if
Green Lantern was a hit, this wouldn't even be a discussion.
Man of Steel will make a lot of money, but it doesn't necessarily mean other DC heroes will see the same success. Superman and Batman are in a league of their own.
Superman: The Movie was a blockbuster in 1978, long before comic book movies became THE thing in Hollywood. As enticing as a shared DC universe sounds, I'm sure WB execs still have nightmares of Ryan Reynolds, clad in his CGI suit, going "I KNOW, RIGHT?!" It shouldn't shock anyone that movies like
Man of Steel cost an arm and a leg to make and produce. The Superman reboot boasted a production budget of $225 million and an extra $150 gets tacked on for worldwide marketing. Last year's
The Dark Knight Rises had a $250 million production budget. These films featured one hero and were still that expensive. There's a problem people don't realize when one studio owns an entire library of comic book characters. Screen Rant's Rob Keyes
shed some light on this issue back when the Daredevil film rights reverted back to Marvel Studios. He makes an excellent point. Even though these studios make a lot of money over the course of a year, they still have a limited amount of time and resources. You've probably noticed that whenever there's a DC film coming out, WB only releases one per year. That's because they have more than comic book movies to worry about. This year alone, WB will release a total of 19 movies in theaters. That's 19 production budgets and 19 marketing campaigns to put together. That's a ton of cash right there. They're not opposed to making superhero movies.
The Dark Knight and
Man of Steel are proof of that. The main reason behind their decision to slavishly stick to the Superman/Batman formula is because those two are the most profitable and in a business, you make decisions based on money. We should be happy that they've hired talented filmmakers to bring these characters to the screen and we get artistically rewarding films featuring these characters. The studio has so many other movies to worry about that they can't really afford to do two major DC tentpoles per year (Marvel on the other hand,
only does comic book movies, so they have that luxury). WB can get away with not doing a superhero film at all and still be a very successful studio. Their upcoming slate of films does not have a single DC film (although that will change soon) and includes several potential hits including July's
Pacific Rim, the Hugh Jackman drama
Prisoners, Alfonso Cuarón's original sci-fi film
Gravity, two more
Hobbit films from Peter Jackson, next year's Johnny Depp-starring sci-fi movie
Transcendence, the
Godzilla remake, the Tom Cruise action pic
All You Need Is Kill, and Christopher Nolan's next film,
Interstellar. If all of these films are as successful as the studio hopes, it will generate a lot of profit for WB and DC Comics isn't involved with any of them. When I say that WB doesn't need to do something like
Justice League, this is what I mean. Superman is a character that is strong enough to carry a trilogy on his own similar to how Batman was able to do the same thing. With the success of
Man of Steel, the studio has a tentpole franchise to fill the void left by the departure of Nolan's Batman. They don't need to do a shared universe because they have so many other sources of revenue. Smaller dramas like
Argo cost less money to make and in some cases are more profitable. Especially in this tough economic climate, WB wants to be cautious with their money and avoid another
Green Lantern-type disaster. As I said in my Marvel Studios article, eventually the superhero film trend will end. Whatever replaces it remains to be seen, but our costumed friends aren't going to be around in the multiplex forever. Moving forward, WB needs to craft a long term game plan in order to continue to flourish. A shared movie universe is something you need to be all in on and I have never gotten the impression that WB was completely sold on doing this. If they still have their doubts, they should just stick to their guns and continue to do what they are doing. It's smarter to take this one film at a time and see what happens instead of diving head first into something they're not sure of. Comic books readers may beg WB and post fantasy movie lineups in comments sections all they want, but the reality is the studio has always been reluctant about bringing DC characters to the screen (even in the genre's newfound popularity) and the shared universe game may not be for them. With the limited resources at their disposal, they have to either resort to one DC film per year (prolonging the Justice League from forming) or cut into the budgets of smaller projects like
Prisoners and like I said above, I think they're more likely to go with the first option. This may not be what fans want to hear, but at least we've gotten some quality films from the studio during this age of superhero films. That's something, right?
What do you think WB should do next? Do you want to see a DC Cinematic Universe or are you OK with a solo Superman trilogy? Let us know in the comments section!