Generally, it’s a bad sign for a movie, at least one that wants to keep its director, when said director goes off and makes another movie. For example, Doug Liman went off to make another movie while he was attached to Gambit, and wound up jumping cinematic universes entirely. So it’s not really a great sign that Zack Snyder is going off and pitching a movie to be made on spec in the wake of Justice League 2 being pushed back.
While it’s hardly the damning evidence the blogosphere seems to think, there are some interesting lines to read between with The Last Photograph, Snyder’s war movie about a special ops soldier and a photographer teaming up to find the former’s family in Afghanistan. It’s a project that Snyder held the rights to, but they lapsed. He had actors attached, but they moved on since the movie more or less fell apart. Movies in this situation are basically dead, and it’s unusual, to put it mildly, that a director would go back and try to revive such a project, especially with a guaranteed hit like Justice League on the way and a sequel in the pipe.
The answer, of course, could simply be Snyder is exhausted. When Justice League arrives in 2017, he’ll have made three superhero movies back-to-back over the space of seven years. He might not have a fourth in him, and frankly if the man thinks a trip to Afghanistan is a palette-cleanser, it might be hard to blame him for taking a break from the superhero genre. The fact that Warner Bros. just shook up its highest levels also means he may have lost an ally in the executive suite.
Still, the news pairs curiously with the fact that the DC cinematic universe doesn’t have Hollywood’s general love of sequels, something that was announced right from the start in 2014. Man Of Steel 2, a movie that would be arriving tomorrow from any other studio, seems to be in perpetual limbo. Instead of greenlighting Suicide Squad 2 — a movie that we’ll remind you made three quarters of a billion dollars off the back of a team of villains most filmgoers were barely aware existed — Warner Bros. just gave Margot Robbie and David Ayer the money to make Gotham City Sirens instead. In fact, between now and 2020, there’s not a single sequel on the production schedule for a DC hero. In fact, DC seems intent on not announcing sequels. In addition to Sirens, Justice League Dark is also in the pile; it’s what Doug Liman jumped off of Gambit to direct.
Warners may simply be seeing the writing on the wall. 2016 was a terrible year for sequels. Star Trek Beyond, Jason Bourne, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Inferno, Jack Reacher: Never Look Back, Independence Day: Resurgence, X-Men Apocalypse, and Alice: Through The Looking Glass all either “underperformed,” to use Hollywood’s favorite parlance for a movie that makes its money back but probably won’t be getting a sequel, or in some cases outright bombed, after years of sequels showing enormous growth at the box office. X-Men: Apocalypse made roughly two-thirds of what X-Men: Days Of Future Past collected, for example. Meanwhile Deadpool, Doctor Strange, and Suicide Squad, none of whom were exactly well-known superheroes, all racked up enormous box office returns.
And, of course, likely sold a lot of merchandise and comic books, another factor studios can’t ignore: By total coincidence, DC’s next big superhero fight, beginning next week, will pit the Suicide Squad against the Justice League. Of course, film schedules can shift, and entire slates can be canceled. But there’s something curious and against Hollywood procedure happening here, and it may end with the Justice League showing up in other heroes’ movies instead of a litany of sequels.
