Warner Bros restructures DC Comics

[Bad Bishop]

When I first starting reading this, I thought "uh-oh" but I think this will be good as long as a) the comics still continue -- I tend to read DC's almost exclusively these days -- and b) DC and Warners get off their butts and get some movies out there. I'm not saying quantity over quality or anything but given SpiderMan and Iron Man and even Fantastic Four getting product out there, while all DC has to show for itself is two Batman movies (we won't count Watchmen) ... I mean, is it really that difficult to get a Wonder Woman movie done? Or Superman Returns II? Or a Justice League movie?

We may yet see a JLA film, if Marvel Entertainment scores with The Avengers in 2012. By that time, Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan won't be involved with Batman anymore, and their artistic sensibilities won't get in the way of the superhero team concept.

The lack of progress on Wonder Woman has been particularly annoying. But the restructuring of DC reported today does offer new hope. Incidentally, I watched G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra a few weeks ago. The tall and bosomy Rachel Nichols played Scarlett. As far as I'm concerned, she should now be the frontrunner to play WW. I hope that someone high up at Warner Bros. will agree, and that the studio will be ready to offer her a rich three-picture deal for this franchise before another year passes.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Any new Superman film will be a do over and not a sequel to Superman Returns. That's been clear for awhile.

Here's a message from Diane Nelson to DC employees:

Dear DC Colleagues and Friends,

As hopefully each of you now know, this morning Warner Bros. announced the formation of DC Entertainment, and I’ve been entrusted with the honor of heading up this exciting new venture, reporting to Jeff Robinov, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Group.

DC Entertainment’s mission is to deeply integrate the DC brand and characters into all of Warner Bros.’ creative production and distribution businesses, while maintaining the integrity of the properties and DC’s longstanding commitment to and respect for writers, creators and artists. The founding of DC Entertainment is about Warner Bros. taking DC to the next level and giving DC an even greater degree of focus and prioritization in all the businesses in which we operate—films, television, home entertainment, digital, consumer products and videogames.

You are all an integral part of the success DC has achieved to date and your expertise and support will be essential moving forward – as we raise this brand and collection of characters to even greater heights. Together we can make the next 75 years even more successful and productive than DC’s illustrious 75-year history.

Jeff and I will be in the DC offices next week and will say hello personally at that time. Until then, thank you in advance for your support and continued contributions to DC Comics and the new DC Entertainment.

Best regards,

Diane

 

[Mistral]

Fascinating story. It should be interesting to see what we end up with.

 

[C.E. Evans]

A nice way of saying:
"You are all my slaves, bitches..."

 

[Christopher]

The problem with doing a Justice League movie after Marvel does Avengers is that it would feel derivative. Especially if WB started out introducing the heroes individually and then teaming them up. It would be a challenge to find a distinctive way to do the JL.

 

[Trent Roman]

Given the entertainment industry's tendency to ape every successful venture until it's run into the ground, I doubt anybody worries about being deriviative.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Newsarama spoke to Diane Nelson and Paul Levitz about the restructuring. You can read the interview here.

Some highlights:

"There is a reason that I am not, nor could I, take on the role of publisher moving forward, nor do I intend to," Nelson told Newsarama Wednesday afternoon. "I'm not looking to stick my nose into an area where I'm not needed. What I'm hoping to do, and what this move by the company is about is taking DC as an entity and as a holder of wonderful stories and characters and focusing on it, prioritizing it, and working more effectively with it throughout Warner Bros. and Time-Warner."

"I will look toward the experts at DC that begins with Paul and continues on down through the publishing house, look to their expertise in those stories and characters," she said. "And then I think my role will be very much about working with the various content development and distribution areas of the company and figuring out how do we, with a renewed prioritization and focus, seed these stories and characters appropriately, carefully and effectively throughout our company. That's what this is about."

Nelson said the recent announcement of involvement, for example, by comic book writers like Geoff Johns, Marv Wolfman and Grant Morrison in the development of movies about DC characters is an example of what the company is hoping to continue.

"Cross platform, we have opportunity across all our businesses to not only take the most well-known and high-profile brands and bring them to life with the guidance of people who know them well, but to incubate new ones," she said.

Nelson said that among the things that will be focused upon will be how DC's characters can be utilized in feature films, acknowledging that among them will be Superman and Wonder Woman.

"Of course they're priorities," she said. "But we'll equally be looking at other properties and stories that can be incubated. It may start in digital, it may start in television, it could end up being video games. There could be casual games that come out of properties that come from Minx.

"That's going to be the fun of it is making sure we look at all facets of the prism, and making sure we don't just look at it as a linear... 'here's theatrical, now what do we spin off of that' thing," she said. "That's not our goal. That's a piece of the puzzle.

"We will be putting together a much more, as I've been describing it, 'meat on the bone' presentation and look at what our content slate will be across all of our businesses in the first quarter," she said. "

 

[Timby]

Why in the hell is a Lobo movie going forward? Absolutely no one outside of hardcore comic fans who were in their prime reading years in the '90s knows who in the hell he is, and it's pretty hard to market an interstellar bounty hunter / biker. It feels like a poor man's Ghost Rider, and we all know how well that one turned out.

Even Green Lantern is an iffy proposition.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Why in the hell is a Lobo movie going forward? Absolutely no one outside of hardcore comic fans who were in their prime reading years in the '90s knows who in the hell he is, and it's pretty hard to market an interstellar bounty hunter / biker.

How well known a comic book character is to the general public doesn't correlate to the potential box office a film adaptation of that character could make (see: The Mask, Men in Black, etc). And I think an interstellar bounty hunter could actually be quite easy to market.

It feels like a poor man's Ghost Rider, and we all know how well that one turned out.

Could feel like a rich man's Ghost Rider if it's well made, and the tone and the personality of the characters should set them apart quite a bit.

 

[Skywalker]

Why in the hell is a Lobo movie going forward? Absolutely no one outside of hardcore comic fans who were in their prime reading years in the '90s knows who in the hell he is, and it's pretty hard to market an interstellar bounty hunter / biker. It feels like a poor man's Ghost Rider, and we all know how well that one turned out.

People probably said similar things about Blade when it was in production back in the late '90s.

 

[Timby]

Blade is remembered as a success in that it was a good proof-of-concept, and a movie that was good, not that it was a box-office smash that made huge dollars for the studio. (Heck, it cost around $50 million to make, after reshoots, and it only made around $70 million at the box office. Warner Brothers sold off almost all of the international distribution rights.)

Where Blade succeeded was that it was the first comic movie released in the aftermath of Batman & Robin, and it showed everyone that a serious, dark-toned movie (loosely) based on its comic roots could actually turn out to be an enjoyable and entertaining film. It was also fortunate in its timing, in that it came out during an absolute wasteland of action movies.

Lobo, though? OK, with Guy Ritchie at the helm, the movie has the potential to be good. But it seems very, very odd for Warner Bros. to be angling Lobo as a possible summer tentpole project.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Blade isn't the only example, though. The Mask and Men in Black were both based on comic books that even most comic book fans hadn't heard of, let alone the general public, and both films were smash hits.

 

[JacksonArcher]

Yes and most people didn't even think Blade was based on a comic-book. They probably thought it was a vampire movie.

X-Men was kind of the first relatively big success after Batman & Robin in the sense that it featured actual superheroes in costumes and proved that a serious, authentic take was commercially and critically viable. I believe it was after the success of that film that we saw the greenlight for the long stagnating Spider-Man film just two years later.

 

[Nick Ryder]

I was thinking about the Wonder Woman movie again this afternoon, and thought they really need to get someone on board that knows/understands/respects mythology to tackle Wonder Woman. I mean Xena was kinda like a poor man's Wonder Woman really, at least in the way that she interacted with the various Greek gods and goddesses. But, they also need to treat the character with a level of respect that won't just reduce Wonder Woman to a woman in a bustier and panties prancing around. Other wise they may as well turn the character over to Vivid. I'm sure there's plenty of dark haired wonder women in their stable of whores... I mean "actresses".

I'm thinking of the early George Perez era of Wonder Woman, where they revamped her and really upped the ante with the mythological stuff and while they were a race of women they weren't sluts. So anyone's wet dream about Megan Fox donning the suit... no.

I think Wonder Woman could be a very strong property for them, so I'm hopeful. As I am hopeful of a revamped Superman and more team friendly Batman movie. Bale is good, but honestly I think they need to introduce the concept of Dick Greyson in the next movie so maybe they can have Dick be the Batman in the JLA

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Here's one of the bits of information from The Hollywood reporter's story about this:

The first order of business will be a review of all the DC projects currently in Warners' pipelines with an eye toward developing a new master plan for upcoming releases that will be announced by January or February, charting the studio's priorities more clearly.

 

[Bad Bishop]

Here's one of the bits of information from The Hollywood reporter's story about this:

The first order of business will be a review of all the DC projects currently in Warners' pipelines with an eye toward developing a new master plan for upcoming releases that will be announced by January or February, charting the studio's priorities more clearly.

That's their new master plan. Here's what their OLD master plan was in August 2008 (as reported by the Wall Street Journal):

Emboldened by this summer's success with "The Dark Knight," Warner Bros.' movie studio is setting a new strategy.

The Time Warner Inc. unit, like some other Hollywood studios, is planning to release fewer films into the crowded marketplace. But the studio, known for making more big, expensive movies than most rivals, plans to make even more of those -- some centered on properties from its DC Comics unit, such as Batman.

Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov wants the studio to release as many as eight such movies a year by 2011. "The long-term goal of the studio is to take advantage of what has become a very global market by focusing on bigger films that require a bigger commitment," he says.

The studio's one big accomplishment after one year was a greenlight for Green Lantern. Obviously, the other big projects didn't progress within the old regime. This time, it feels like they are dead serious about making some big DC movies.

I wonder if Robinov has the authority to kill Smallville after this season. I don't know whether it's been announced that this is the final season. But I think an interval between the TV show and the next Superman film might create more demand for the latter.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

The studio's one big accomplishment after one year was a greenlight for Green Lantern. Obviously, the other big projects didn't progress within the old regime. This time, it feels like they are dead serious about making some big DC movies.

Well, a lot of fans just focus on DCU superhero films, but the studio obviously looks at all of DC's properties. So since that 2008 article Warners has released Watchmen and given the go-ahead to The Losers, Jonah Hex, and Green Lantern, plus signed directors for Lobo and Deadman. That's quite a bit of forward momentum.

But I think there's been frustration at the studio, particularly on Robinov's part, with the slow rate of progress in developing such superhero projects as Wonder Woman and The Flash, and I agree that there's a seriousness here in trying to expedite matters on that front with the formation of DC Entertainment.

 

[Timby]

Blade isn't the only example, though. The Mask and Men in Black were both based on comic books that even most comic book fans hadn't heard of, let alone the general public, and both films were smash hits.

Devil's advocate: The Mask was a huge hit because it came immediately on the coattails of Ace Ventura and Jim Carrey was a huge manic comedy star. Men in Black starred two of the biggest stars of the mid-to-late '90s.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Devil's advocate: The Mask was a huge hit because it came immediately on the coattails of Ace Ventura and Jim Carrey was a huge manic comedy star. Men in Black starred two of the biggest stars of the mid-to-late '90s.

Of course who's directing and starring in a film often has a big impact on its box office performance, but the concept of the film is always important, and The Mask and Men in Black both had very good salable concepts that wove box office gold when combined with smart casting choices. The fact that those concepts were taken from obscure comic books was irrelevant to how salable they were as feature films.

 

[Bad Bishop]

The studio's one big accomplishment after one year was a greenlight for Green Lantern. Obviously, the other big projects didn't progress within the old regime. This time, it feels like they are dead serious about making some big DC movies.

Well, a lot of fans just focus on DCU superhero films, but the studio obviously looks at all of DC's properties. So since that 2008 article Warners has released Watchmen and given the go-ahead to The Losers, Jonah Hex, and Green Lantern, plus signed directors for Lobo and Deadman. That's quite a bit of forward momentum.

Yes. And as others have pointed out, the Animation division has done great work as well.

I didn't count Watchmen because it was already filmed by July 2008, when WB showed the crowd-pleasing footage at Comic-Con.