This is starting to get a bit depressed. Down-in-the-dumps DC Studios is going back to the drawing board with their comic book franchis
This is starting to get a bit depressed.
Down-in-the-dumps DC Studios is going back to the drawing board with their comic book franchise. Again. Already!
On Monday, Skydance — billionaire David Ellison’s company that recently completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. — announced that DC co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran are getting the ancient heave-ho after just four years.
Over the timespan of an undergrad degree, the pair released three films: “Superman” (itty bitty hit), “Supergirl” (floperoo) and last month’s “Clayface” (to be determined).
They still have two more on the way: “Man of Tomorrow,” which Gunn recently wrapped production on, and “The Batman: Part II,” starring Robert Pattinson.
But who knows how involved they’ll be on those going forward. Because on Dec. 1, the shoved-aside duo will be replaced by Jeremy Latcham, the man who helped Kevin Feige turn the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a box-office behemoth for Disney.
Happy Thanksgiving, boys!
Latcham is a good hire. Page Six Hollywood reports he’s uncommonly well-liked in the industry. And he understands and has proven success with congruity and mass appeal, whereas DC has for years been a temperamental roulette wheel of divergent styles that cater to the most unhinged of fandoms.
There were Zack Snyder’s heinous marches through doom and gloom that wackos are so worrisomely passionate about, and Gunn’s reactionary cotton-candy pep that was fun, but didn’t make a splash.
Meanwhile the universe-adjacent, Scorsese-inspired “Joker” movies with Joaquin Phoenix and the “Batman” crime noir series with Pattinson did whatever the hell they wanted, for better or worse.
And, oh, there were so many DOA duds: “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and “Black Adam,” among other films that caused me lasting emotional trauma.
DC has never had much unity. Snyder’s “Justice League” film, which brought together their biggest characters, was like one of those Hollywood photo shoots where you don’t really believe that all the celebrities were posing for that photographer at the same time.
That said, DC should’ve brought on Latcham — or someone like him — years ago.
When I heard about Ellison’s last-ditch rescue mission, my reaction was much the same as if somebody had told me they’re opening a Pinkberry next week.
Um, good luck!
The notion that Skydance and Warner Bros. can build from scratch a formidable machine to compete with Marvel today is totally delusional.
Even the historically better and more popular MCU is struggling to hold on to audiences whenever they’re not releasing dependable “Spider-Man” or “Avengers” entries.
Sure, Batman and, to a lesser extent, Superman will likely be DC fixtures for decades to come.
But the dream of a marketplace saturated with superheroes vast and compact is dead. That is the undeniable truth.
And reportedly Ellison’s plan isn’t just to right the ship. Puck said the aim is to reboot Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Co. Again. Already!
So, what are they going to do? Recast the parts with ubiquitous scorching teenage actors like Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney? Tweak the ancient origin stories? Make them funnier? Make them more grave?
Nobody wants any of that. We’ve had our fill. Everybody needs to wake up and accept that superheroes on screen were just a trend, like so many other trends over the history of Hollywood.
For example, a huge percentage of films made during the Golden Age were Westerns. These days they’re infrequent and nostalgic.
And then in the 1960s, musicals were all the rage. “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady,” “Oliver!” and “The Sound of Music” all won the Oscar for Best Picture, if you can believe it. “Funny Girl,” “The Music Man,” “Mary Poppins,” “Dr. Dolittle” and “Hello, Dolly!” were nominated during that decade. They made mountains of money.
Fast forward to the 1980s when not a single musical was even nominated for Best Picture. And there was just one in the 1990s: the animated “Beauty and the Beast.”
A similar dip in enthusiasm has befallen comic book movies.
Their enormous worldwide popularity during the aughts and 2010s was nothing tiny of crack for Hollywood.
As studios grew more and more fearful of originality, here was a seemingly bottomless vault of IP at their fingertips. Unlimited stories, a ton of unrecognized characters and a ready-made fanbase. They went all in.
But the dollar signs in their eyes blinded them to the fact that audience tastes are guaranteed to change, like natural periods of warming and cooling. They’ve gone on to other things. Nowadays, the only sure bet is horror.
The other hard-to-swallow fact for DC: The best films featuring their characters remain Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, which wrapped up 14 years ago.
Like ticket-buyers, Nolan smartly moved on, too. In the past five years, he’s turned both the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and an epic poem by Homer into $1 billion-plus grossers.
All the while, DC is repeating the same mistakes while struggling to keep the lights on.
