When Ben Fritz began live-tweeting today's Warner Bros. stockholder's meeting and the details began to emerge about Warner's full planned line-up of superhero DC titles, fandom went crazy.
If you need any indicator of where Warner's heart is in all of this, consider that they could have easily made this announcement at the New York Comic-Con over the weekend in front of a room full of people who would have lost their minds to be getting all of this information in one massive info-dump. Instead, they did this for the shareholders to reassure them that they've got a plan.
It's ambitious, I'll give them that much. Marvel's got things running smoothly now at two films per year, with an option of doing a third if they think it's worthwhile, but it wasn't easy for them to get that sort of confidence about what those films would look like and how well they would work. DC is jumping in with a two-film-per-year schedule and they've got a slate full of titles that I would argue are not any sort of sure thing with the general filmgoing public.
That's not a problem by itself, per se, as the worldwide box-office for “Guardians Of The Galaxy” would indicate, but there's a reason that film was the tenth movie in their game plan and not the third one.
We've taken a look at each of the projects announced today, but we left off the untitled Batman and Superman movies that are also being developed, since DC didn't date those. Presumably, “Man Of Steel 2” will be the Superman title, and I'll be curious to see where they drop the Batman film into a very crowded schedule, and how quickly they do it. I'm not sure I can imagine Ben Affleck staying in Batman shape for a decade while they make his movies.
Whatever the case, there's a ton here to digest, so dig in.
“Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice” is in theaters March 16, 2016.