DC Comics plots big comeback
Over a week ago The Hollywood Reporter published an article that took comic fans by storm, and what it promised finally gave answers to what many diehards have been wondering for a long time, “will DC Comics finally make the movies we want to see?”.
While over the last twenty years American audiences have been subject to dozens of comic book movies, the one common thing about these movies is Marvel comics inspired a good majority of them. Since 1998 Marvel has had over 20 movies come out, while in that time DC comics has only made around 6.
Although many can argue that the quality movies, Such as The Dark Knight and Watchmen, do belong to DC, the one thing we do know is that many of DC’s best properties have not seen the light of day, that is until now.
According to the Hollywood Reporter DC comics and Warner Bros. has several new concepts currently in production such as The Losers, Green Lantern, Jonah Hex, and Red.
While the article goes on to mention Aquaman, Flash, Adam Strange, Bizarro Superman, a possible Superman reboot, a sequel to Constantine, Shazam, a sequel The Dark Knight with Christopher Nolan helming, and two Green Arrow movies (one as an origin solo pic, and the other being the prison set pic called Super Max ) as potential movies, what really caught my eye was what they mentioned about their new production plans.
The article begins to explain how Warner Bro. and DC comics partnership worked, with Warner optioning and DC getting paid a fee comparable to what a property could command on the open market, but as it explained beyond that point DC had no real involvement, leaving the movies to be made by Warner’s producers to interpret the characters as they envisioned. But with new plans it seems DC is going to now be in direct partnership with Warner Bros. in making future motion pictures based on these comic book properties giving DC more input and control of how these characters stories play out, making them accurate and true to the comics.
“The creative process is by and large a true partnership,” Noveck said. “They’ll ask us a ton of questions, and we’ll give a ton of answers. We will talk back and forth. We’ll discuss writers and talent, but ultimately it’s their decision.”
To properly begin this process Warner Bros hired three of DC’s biggest writers ( Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison and Marv Wolfman) to act as consultants and possible writers for its future superhero movies. According to the article this move was actually more involved taking back the reins on projects being handled by such current producers as Charles Roven (“The Flash”) and Akiva Goldsman (“Teen Titans”). As a result of this new partnership a new “Flash” treatment has been written by Geoff Johns with the final script being written by Dan Mazeau.
While some of this all may seem as a dream come true to DC fans, only time will tell if any true results will be seen.
