In an interview with the LA Times published on Tuesday, WB Exectutive Jeff Robinov spoke a bit about the future of DC superhero properties in film, including future Wonder Woman and Flash films, the future of the Batman franchise, and a Justice League movie.
In the interview, Robinov notes that a Justice League movie is one of the top priorities at Warner Bros. and a new script is currently in development. If you remember, in early 2008 a Justice League movie was close to starting production, casting had even been done, but was then killed by the writer’s strike as well as some Australian tax issues. Robinov also mentioned they are looking at a 2013 release date and that the film may serve as a spin-off to other superhero films for Wonder Woman and the Flash.
Robinov said a new Justice League script is in the works. Also being written for Warner are scripts featuring the Flash and Wonder Woman, who could be spun off into their own movies after Justice League. Though Wonder Woman is also in the works as a television pilot for NBC produced by Warner, Robinov dismissed that as a sticking point. “Wonder Woman could be a film as well, the same way that ‘Superman Returns’ came out while ‘Smallville’ was on,” he said, referring to the 2006 film that put Brandon Routh in the cape and the television show starring Tom Welling that is now in its 10th and final season.
The following day, heyuguys.co.uk had the chance to speak with Snyder at the London premier for Sucker Punch, and he noted that this Justice League movie that’s in the works will have nothing to do with Nolan’s Batman, or his Superman.
It doesn’t. Like what Chris Nolan is doing and what I’m doing with Superman, what they’ll do with Justice League will be it’s own thing with it’s own Batman and own Superman. We’ll be over here with our movie and they’ll kinda get to do it twice which is kinda cool.
So it looks like we may still get a Justice League movie afterall and DC and WB are approaching it quite a bit different than how Marvel is approaching their superhero ensemble film, The Avengers. Marvel has obviously set up many of the main characters for their film by having them in their stand-alone films prior to The Avengers. WB looks to be taking the approach of developing a stand-alone Justice League movie and then using that to launch a few new film franchises. In my opinion, Marvel has the right approach – not to say that DC/WB’s is “wrong”. It may be confusing to fans to have more than one iteration of say, Superman, on the big screen at the same time. That being said though, it’s not really different from a comics point of view in reading two unrelated Superman titles like Superman and All-Star Superman and enjoying them both. The only problem is, much of the general population that will see these films aren’t comic book readers and may have a hard time getting that Snyder’s Superman film and this upcoming Justice League film will essentially exist in seperate universes.
This Justice League movie is in the very early stages it sounds like, so a lot could change. While Warner Bros. may decide to cast their own Superman for the Justice League film, they may still decide to fold in whatever continuity Snyder portrays in his Superman film for a little continuity. We will just have to, as always, wait and see!
What do you think of Warner Bros. approach to a Justice League movie by making it it’s own movie outside Nolan’s and Snyder’s Batman and Superman universes? What about the approach opposite to Marvel of launching the ensemble film first, using it as the vehicle to launch Wonder Woman and the Flash stand-alone films?
Sound off in the comments below!