Warner Bros Is Planning On Completely Restarting DC?
Could Warner Bros. be thinking of restarting DC and the extended universe? Recent moves within the company suggest it might happen
To say that the DC Extended Universe has had trouble keeping up with Marvel in the superhero movie franchise battles is a complete and utter understatement. From a coherence and interconnected standpoint, Marvel is lapping the field on DC with the latter struggling to maintain consistency throughout its original run of movies and series. Not that there haven’t been winners in there, but as a whole anyone would agree that DC lacks certain trademarks that have made the Marvel Cinematic Universe such a powerhouse. It looks like if the folks heading up Warner Bros. have their way, there could be a moderate reset on the DCEU in an effort to bring it more in line with their main competition.
According to Variety, the talk of pivoting, resetting, or even starting over with the DC Extended Universe comes following Discovery finalizing its purchase of Warner Bros. and its parent company Warner Media. It is expected that with this move (worth a reported $43 billion), Discovery is seeking to integrate more of a vertical programming model that brings the content into a structure that streamlines the different stories and characters. There’s no doubt that DC has all the goods on that front, carrying some of the most popular and iconic characters the genre has. But the efforts, up until this point, to unite the platform’s content into a cohesive structure have fallen somewhat flat. In this way, it seems that Discovery wants to right some of those wrongs, and to do so could mean resetting the DCEU.
Part of this reporting from Variety also mentions that in the deal, there could be an effort among the folks at Warner Bros. to hire a “czar” of the DC Universe, someone akin to what Marvel has with Kevin Feige who oversees all of the creative elements of the MCU. There’s no doubt that Feige’s vision and leadership have been one of (if not *the*) driving force in making Marvel what it is today on the big and small screen.
This move for Warner Bros will have to do with “brand strategy” as it’s mentioned in the reporting. This is a recognition that the offerings from the studio up until this point have definitely pumped out hits along the way, but the alignment doesn’t exist in the same way within the MCU. Sure, the latter can (and has) had different iterations of characters with more on the way, but it also reflects back to the original and ongoing plan.
Over at DC, there’s no such uniformity or projects working in parallel. The best works, like Wonder Woman, The Batman, or on a smaller level Peacemaker (as just some examples) are all great but have really nothing to do with each other on any level. They all just happened to be good because of their talents and creatives, but they exist completely independently within the universe. Warner Bros. initial effort at this with the Zack Snyder-led Superman and Justice League offerings didn’t get there on that front.
It will be interesting to see where this goes. No doubt that current Warner Bros. productions within the DC Extended Universe will stick around, they are too good. But a higher-up overseeing the overall brand would almost certainly have massive downstream benefits for the overall franchise as a whole.
