Deadline.com is reporting that WB Group President, Jeff Robinov is making the restructuring of DC Comics his number one priority, making DC his direct responsibility. This shake up could possibly mean that there may be life yet left in the Flash and Wonder Woman movies that had previously been put on hold for the time being:
This change has been in the works quietly for two years ever since Robinov moved into the top slot. “It was Jeff’s idea to have DC Comics reporting to him, and DC will be his direct responsibility with Diane Nelson,” an insider confided to me. I’ve also learned that Robinov for months has quietly gone to producers like Chuck Roven and Joel Silver and Akiva Goldman and “called back” all their high profile DC titles in development like The Flash and Wonder Woman. Not only was that shocking to the producers, but even more so when they found out this was part of Robinov’s strategy to severely limit the number of gross participants on the projects. Because the producers were told that they may get the titles back to develop, but with far less rich deals. “Jeff always wanted some kind of oversight of DC, and now he wants Warner’s to hold onto ownership,” my insider explains.
The article also talks about all of the chaos and what could be conceived as failures that have gone on over at WB, much of said blame fell on WB Chairman Alan Horn, who didn’t lock down the rights to Watchmen which resulted in lawsuits from FOX.
Of Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Justice League, only Batman has an ongoing live action franchise. And now that director Chris Nolan is working on back-to-back pics, who knows when the threequel will get a start date. True, Jonah Hex has wrapped, and Green Lantern starts shooting in the spring. That’s the same time period that Human Target debuts on Fox. There’s been some very successful development by DC Comics SVP of Creative Affairs Gregory Noveck. But Horn’s studio has been chaotically starting and stopping work on scripts for the high profile live action pics. Meanwhile, Marvel is exploiting the hell out of its characters with an ultra-ambitious and self-financed (except for Spider-Man at Sony) film slate.
You can read the rest of this article (and there is much more to read) at the deadline.com link at the top of the article. This now makes for shake ups for both comic powerhouses, Marvel and DC, in the last few weeks.