Jon Berg and Geoff Johns oversee the film adaptation of DC Comics for Warner, and they were refreshingly candid in an interview with Variety about what has and hasn’t worked in the DCEU. In talking about the success of Wonder Woman, Johns — who is currently working on a sequel with director Patty Jenkins — reiterated his support for a more optimistic DCEU while Berg noted that the previous DCEU films “may have been too dark in parts.” (Probably both figuratively and literally.)
Berg went on to drop some home truths about Suicide Squad and Batman V Superman.
On Suicide Squad, the movie did incredibly well commercially. It didn’t work narratively. You had some great casting and some great characterizations, but where the story fell down was on narrative, on plot. We could do better. Batman V Superman was tonally dark. People didn’t respond to that.
It’s not the first time BvS has been called dark or the first time someone has pointed out the disjointed narrative of Suicide Squad, which was rumored to have been recut by a company that has only made trailers before, although director David Ayer denied that rumor, saying it was his final cut.
Speaking of rumors, Berg shot down the rumor that more scenes with Wonder Woman were being added to Justice League, saying that they knew she was popular from the response to Batman V Superman, so she already had a large role in Justice League.
There were some other points of interest in the interview, like the story about how Joss Whedon was hired to direct Batgirl. He came in for a general meeting, saw a Batgirl title on DC’s master board, and asked if they were really going to make it. Meanwhile, no one at Kraft Heinz headquarters responds when we ask repeatedly if they’re really going to hire a new driver for the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Maybe if we directed The Avengers, they wouldn’t block our number.
(Via Variety)