Warners & DC Announce *10* Movies Coming Soon
DC and Warner Brothers have decided to step up their game to Marvel/Disney’s universe of characters connected with the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy: TEN, count em, TEN new movies to be released through 2020.
It might sound like a gamble on paper. But you got to understand: this is how the studios, at least these two who have such a roster of characters that bring in the big bucks, want to get people coming back and back to theaters, especially kids. Of course, some of these characters like Batman, Superman and Green Lantern all have movies already – and the first film on the slate for DC is the Batman v Superman movie due out summer of 2016 (it was originally due next year but got pushed back due to special effects work).
It’s still interesting to see some of the characters are who are getting films. And of course none of the sites – and it’s on practically every site by now, but you can see it here in some detail via EW – have any reported directors or stars outside of who is already involved with Dawn of Justice (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman).
Here’s the slate:
2016
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice*
Suicide Squad
2017
Wonder Woman
Justice League
2018
The Flash
Aquaman
2019
Shazam
Justice League 2
2020
Cyborg
Green Lantern
Is this something that comes out of nowhere from this studio? I don’t think so. It has to be considered that Marvel, having announced a slate of films going on for the next *fifteen* years (albeit titles haven’t all been announced, the game-plan for the MCU to last that long is in place, provided of course that the movies keep, you know, making money), is such the big competitor that DC has been planning this for a while now. Whether all of the films will be released as planned, who knows?
Flicks with relatively well-known and loved heroes like The Flash and Wonder Woman (the latter went through a production hell for years with, ironically, Joss Whedon for a long time attached) are surely welcome pieces of news for comic book fans looking for the heroes to hit the screen for the first time in solo runs – unlike the Marvel universe, by the way, their solo films will be coming *after* the Big Team-Up Movie, unlike The Avengers which built up the characters before bringing them together – but a couple of characters like Cyborg (a black superhero by the way) and Shazam are not that well known to mainstream audiences.
On the other hand, the success of a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy this summer, which surely most Hollywood execs are pointing to as (momentary) proof that B/C-list characters can bring in big box-office might be making DC and Warners willing to take some (minor in the grand scheme of things) risks. Plus, in the world-wide international market (i.e. China, Russia), action sells more often than not, regardless of story content.
Of course a lot of questions are still up in the air, like the casting for Green Lantern (if it’s a reboot, which is most likely, Ryan Reynolds would be out), and the fact that Ezra Miller is now in the running to play The Flash (the character is played by Grant Gustin on the American CW TV show). And already the list for the Suicide Squad, another property that has some character not too well known to the non-comic-book-die-hards in the world, is coming out with names for little known players like Will Smith, Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie are being tossed around. David Ayer (the upcoming Brad Pitt war movie Fury) is currently attached to direct for a 2016 release, and Zack Snyder, currently in post-production on BVS, will also make the two Justice League movies.
In other words, it’s a big day for fans of DC to see more to come from Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot as part of the Justice League – and believe you me, the rumors are going to be flooding the news queues for a while. But fellow followers, what do you think? Did anyone ask for a Shazam movie? Will you see it? What about another solo Batman or Superman movie from this universe? Let us know.
