DCEU on "The Right Course" says Warner Bros. CEO
A Beautiful Lie?
By Alex Burns
Time Warner chairman-CEO Jeff Bewkes has sent a bold message to shareholders today (via Variety) regarding the DCEU. It seems the blinders are well and truly off for WB who appear to at least be aware of the issues the studio still has to overcome with it's DC properties at the multiplex. Whether or not they have the wits to go about solving said problems may well be a different story.
“We do think there’s a little room for improvement,” Bewkes said. “We can do a little bit better on the creative. The DC Comics characters have a little more lightness in them than maybe what you saw in those movies, so we’re thinking about that.”
2016 was billed as the big arrival of the extended DC Comics universe on screen. Finally iconic heroes like Batman and Superman would stand side by side and compete with Iron Man and the Avengers for top billing at the box office. It's fair to say that whilst the DC extended universe on film has indeed arrived, it's not exactly the unanimous hit that fans and audiences were expecting. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice underperformed against expectations, despite grossing a healthy looking $873 million worldwide, this is a film that simply should have crossed the billion dollar mark considering modern contemporaries. The critical mauling of the film didn't help either and those reviews have left a big question mark over future entries in the franchise. Fans are split down the middle and audience reaction is still a mystery. Whatever way you dress the BvS salad it's clear that is was missing a few key ingredients, just look at the fallout since the Zack Snyder directed blockbuster finished it's run at theatres.
- Seth Grahame-Smith was replaced by Rick Famuyiwa as The Flash director, a clear indication that WB were starting to question the talent behind these potential franchises
- Ben Affleck was bumped up to executive producer for the upcoming Justice League film, he was one of the few hollywood names to come out unscathed from the BvS misfire
- Executive VP Jon Berg and DC CCO Geoff Johns were promoted to oversee the DC Films in future, Charles Roven who was previously in that job role was swiftly demoted.
- Though unconfirmed, it appears Zack Snyder is on a much tighter leash for Justice League, with the two part movie now cut down to one stand alone film.
Then we come to the recent release of Suicide Squad, a film that we all enjoyed here at Team Cape and Cowl but one where we could also see the flaws that were oh so easy to exploit for critics. Thankfully, Suicide Squad has earned a massive profit at the box office (currently sitting at $720 million worldwide) against it's more modest budget. Still that leaves a lack of brand quality surrounding the DC Film scape, Man of Steel, BvS and Suicide Squad have all been misses with main stream critics and clearly that's a big piece of the jigsaw gone walkabout. Luckily, box office receipts have managed decent (if not spectacular) profits in spite of the bad word of mouth. Imagine what would happen if the reviews were good... Bewkes clearly recognises this but also remains a little defiant that the plan is working.
“The strategy worked,” Bewkes said. “The execution did deliver what we wanted to do. We’re right on course or better. The main thing was to launch DC and reinvigorate it with the fan base. The reboot of Batman with Ben Affleck was a big success.”
Whilst we disagree that the strategy worked completely, after all the fan base for DC was already on board it was everyone else that needed convincing. The Ben Affleck Batman success is a big win and very positive for WB considering the initial backlash to the casting announcement. There's plenty of reasons to be excited going forward for that version of the character.
The change of direction is evident though, no one who watched the Justice League teaser trailer could accuse it of being a typical Zack Snyder trailer, if anything it came across as a Marvel spin-off film. Plenty of humour and light touches amongst all the costumes and heroics. Now that's not by any means a bad thing and to be honest the downright bleak and dark tone of the DCEU up to the ending credits of BvS had almost become too painful to watch.
WB had great success with Batman films taking a dark direction up to the point The Dark Knight Rises released in 2012 but that simply suits the character. If you want to get audiences more interested and invested in heroes like Superman, Wonder Woman and the Flash then you have to play to their strengths, which are more often than not, different to Batman's.
DC Comics at the cinema is one of the most valuable IP's around, there's plenty of life left in this developing franchise yet and it's still VERY early days, let's keep our fingers crossed for Patty Jenkin's solo Wonder Woman film (June 2nd 2017) and of course Zack Snyder's chance at redemption with Justice League (November 17th, 2017)
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