Every summer – or at least the last decade – the month of July has been a marked date on the calendar of fans of the superhero genre. San Diego Comic-Con is always full of trailers, announcements, and surprises. This year was not less, but DC, unlike Marvel, who wanted to make their roadmap very clear, left their biggest announcement a few days late..
And no, it wasn’t a sudden cancellation announcement. bat girlwhich won’t even see the light of day on HBO Max, but was relevant. This week we learned that Warner Bros. discoveryaccording to its new CEO, David Zaslav (a man with a more than successful career in the entertainment world), that DC has a long-term plan for the future.
A plan that, at least on the surface, looks a lot like the one that Marvel started drawing in 2008 with their Cinematic Universe, and that DC has tried to pull off with many setbacks over the years. Since then, the DCEU has not been known whether it exists or not, and tapes like joker or Batmancompletely disabled, were his greatest successes.
DC Studios, plan (perhaps not very) similar to the Marvel
“You look at Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman – these are brands that are known all over the world.”Zaslav said this during a telephone conversation with investors, where he announced a new DC plan. “We have rebooted. We have restructured the business and are going to focus on it where there will be a team with a 10 year plan focused only on DC. We believe we can build a much more sustainable business.”
DC has long wanted to replicate the success of Disney-owned Marvel Studios, which Kevin Feige turned into the highest-grossing movie franchise in history. Zaslav recently brought in retired Alan Horn as an advisor to former Feige boss. During the earnings call, Zaslav suggested that DC would try to emulate the Marvel play.
The result was a 10-year plan that, although it is not yet determined and it is not known what will happen to the characters associated with actors such as Batman Affleck or Pattinson, especially if there is a full or partial restart. Also up in the air is – let’s not leave it nameless – what could have happened to Ezra Miller’s The Flash, which has more and more controversy behind it, but basically it should have been the Gordian knot of the DC Universe.
“The goal is to grow the DC brand. Develop DC characters. But it’s also our job to protect the DC brand, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. discovery
“This is very similar to the structure that Alan Horne, Bob Iger and Kevin Feige have created very effectively at Disney. We believe we can build a much stronger and more sustainable business from DC,” said Zaslav. “Within this, we will focus on quality. We are not going to release any films until they are ready … DC is something that we can improve, ”he bluntly commented.
DC’s history of misadventures is well known:
DC stumbled after completing Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, completed ten years ago.
The studio originally hired Zack Snyder to oversee their universe, which the director released in 2013 along with man of Steel. However, Snyder lost the trust of studio executives after a controversial scandal. Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice since 2016; a film that, in its original version, had a clear cut as a result of all the interventions. No one can tell if it was more of a flop for Snyder or Warner in general.
The truth is that by 2022, if we remember the plan DC launched at the time, some of the films in the ambitious list of 10 titles that were announced in 2014 never materialized, including Justice League 2. Chief Executive Walter Hamada took over DC Films in 2018. and was preparing a series of films, including several for HBO Max, to fill the roles of then-WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar that went unnoticed. Now those plans are changing again.
Now Zaslav is changing course again. He said expensive streaming movies don’t make economic sense: “The goal is to grow the DC brand. Develop DC characters. But it’s also our job to protect the DC brand, and that’s what we’re going to do. .” “We’re going to focus on quality. We are not going to launch any film before it is ready,” said the executive director. “DC is something we can do better,” he said, emphasizing his commitment.
Parallel Path Again… Before Marvel Reboots
Before DC, Marvel is more settled than ever, but it’s going through its fourth phase. which, as in all studies, has been affected by the pandemic. The commitment to television series has also caused the number of episodes to start showing certain signs of depletion, such as that only Spiderman: No Way Home exceeded 1,000 million collections, which, taking into account the premieres of the previous stage (3, from 2016 to 2019), was achieved six times in eleven films, two of which avengers setting a historical record and surpassing 2000 and 2800 respectively.
the date high on Disney Plus now and save with an annual subscriptionwith which you can enjoy its entire catalog of series and films, access to the latest releasesto catalog Star and the best National Geographic documentaries.
At the moment, the average gross in Stage 4 is less than 800 million, which is the lowest since Stage 1, and for Stage 5, it is planned to make 9 films and 6 series in a short period of only three years. Perhaps too much for an audience that should now also be seen with DC’s offering..
Let’s see if this is the new culmination of a genre that has changed the history of cinema, its industry, and the way television and the big screen are connected for better or worse. Or perhaps if this is the start of a stagnation that, on the other hand, has historically happened to other genres as well, such as westerns or some science fiction subgenres.
