Following news earlier this week that Warner Bros. is planning a Justice League movie for 2013 there were questions as to whether it would be connected to Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, and the new Batman reboot which the studio is also planning for after The Dark Knight Rises.

While at the London opening of Sucker Punch Snyder was questioned on the recent Justice League news, and said it won’t be connected to his new take on Superman.

From HeyUGuys:

We asked Snyder about the plans for the Justice League movie and how his Superman fitted in with that? This is what he said,

‘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’

I’m not fond of the idea of having separate Superman and Batman movies running alongside a Justice League franchise. While Superman and Batman are the most well known members of the team the studio should just let them have their own thing going on, and use the Justice League movie to establish The Flash, Wonder Woman and other characters. Do we really need two actors playing Superman and Batman?

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Christopher Nolan’s decision to draw his Batman trilogy to a close next year is a problem for Warner Bros. The studio is already losing Harry Potter this summer, and with their only proven DC franchise on its final stretch they need to plan ahead for 2013 and beyond.

Warner Bros. President Alan Horn is retiring this week, and will be replaced by Jeff Robinov. In a new interview on the future of the studio Robinov said he plans to fill the void with more DC characters, including a Justice Leage movie, and he also intends to reboot the Batman franchise.

From Hero Complex:

“We have the third Batman, but then we’ll have to reinvent Batman…Chris Nolan and [producing partner and wife] Emma Thomas will be producing it, so it will be a conversation with them about what the next phase is.”

The world was given Batman movies before Batman Begins, so it is was inevitable that we would get more after The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan staying on as producer will be encouraging to some fans, but I think they should leave it a few years before giving us another Batman with a new director and new actor in the role.

There is a possibility that the Batman reboot could have connections to other plans by the studio:

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.

Warner Bros. tried making a Justice League movie in 2007/08 but it was hindered by the Writers Guild of America strike, tax credit issues in Australia, and concerns about having a new incarnation of Batman running alongside Nolan’s. Perhaps the end of Christian Bale’s run will allow Warner Bros. to introduce a new Batman that has connections with the Justice League.

What do you think about Warner Bros’ plans for a Batman reboot with Nolan involved, and the possibility of a Justice League movie?

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Warner Bros. has been preparing its schedule for a post-Potter world over recent months, with the hope that DC characters will provide them with tentpole movies for the foreseeable future. They already have Christopher Nolan and David Goyer working on Batman 3 and the Superman reboot, and now they have started to develop a sequel to next year’s Green Lantern, along with solo movie for The Flash.

From HeatVision:

“Green Lantern” is a year away from release, but Warner Bros. already is starting development on a sequel. The studio has hired Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, all of whom worked on the “Lantern” screenplay, to write a treatment for the second installment.

The trio has also been tapped to pen the treatment for the silver-screen incarnation of “The Flash.” Under the deal, they would then go on to write the screenplay for one of the two projects, though which one has not been determined.

Warner Bros. must be pretty confident in Green Lantern to be working on a sequel at this stage. They haven’t released any images, posters or footage from the film yet so they don’t even have fan reaction to go by at this point, never mind early opinions from the general audience.

The studio has a similar plan to Marvel, whereby they introduce characters in their own solo movies before teaming them up for a grand Justice League film further down the line. The Flash is the next obvious candidate to get his own movie, and i’d imagine Wonder Woman and a few others won’t be far off.

The Flash movie will focus on the Barry Allen incarnation of the character who is capable of running faster than the speed of light. He gained his powers after a lightning bolt shattered a case full of chemicals which Allen happened to be within close proximity to. In the comics The Flash stored his costume in a ring when in civilian mode, which ejected the compressed clothing when he needed it. I’m not sure what it is about DC characters and rings but so far they all seem to have one.

What are your thoughts on Warner Bros. developing a sequel to Green Lantern and introducing The Flash?

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In just over a years time the Harry Potter franchise will be coming to an end with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II in July (Part I this November). Over the past 10 years each Harry Potter film has provided Warner Bros. with over $900 million per outing, and thats without taking into account DVD/Blu-ray sales, merchandise etc. They will need to find another event franchise if they want to keep bringing in the $$$.

The only franchise they have at the moment that makes ridiculous amounts of money is Christoper Nolan’s Batman franchise, with The Dark Knight making just over $1 billion worldwide. Batman 3 is currently in development and should do rather well upon its release (2012?), however that is only one film. What tentpole movies will Warner Bros. be filling the summers of 2013 and beyond with?

Superheroes.

According to Collider, who attended a Warner Bros. presentation at the South by Southwest Film Festival, head honcho Alan Horn confirmed that Warner Bros. will be looking to make use of its DC comics library in order to fill the gapping hole left by Harry Potter. This means that over the upcoming year or so we could be hearing developments on movies such as The Flash, Wonder Woman and eventually a Justice League movie. We’ve heard hints of this before as Warner Bros. are planning to emulate Marvel by making solo movies, and then joining everyone up for a big team movie.

I’m not sure a single Wonder Woman or Flash movie will generate a Harry Potter-type box office return, but if they release two superhero movies a year they should end up making similar numbers. It’ll make fanboys happy too.

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Warner Bros. may have one of the most successful comic book franchises in Batman, and it may be about to launch a potential new one with Green Lantern, however Marvel are leaps ahead in the movie department. As we already know, they’ve got plans up until 2012 and beyond with The Avengers and possible sequels to Thor, Iron Man and Captain America.

DC, on the other hand, cancelled production Justice League: Mortal (for a number of reasons) and the rights to Superman are currently in a bit of a legal mess. However, things may be about to change. Time Warner announced today that Networks and Film businesses posted record profits this quarter, and a few hints as to where the DC films are headed were dropped in their conference call.

Tuna Amobi – Standard & Poor’s Equity Group

“…on the DC comics initiative it seems like you have a bunch of paddles in the [works] right now can you talk a little bit about the upcoming release strategy there I know you are working on Green Lantern then The Flash, Wonder, Justice League those titles any time frame and how you see the economics of the overall comics really this kind of affect in the studio margins as a whole and any multi platform implication would also be helpful for that area.”

Jeff Bewkes – Chairman & CEO

“If you go to your question on DC, we are going to have a fairly interesting set of announcements and presentations pretty soon like in a matter of weeks I think. About our plans for DC and basically if you look across the title of the whole band of hits whether its Batman, The Dark Knight, Green Lantern coming up, Superman, there have been a huge number of franchised films that have been part of the Warner [tent pole] strategy that’s been the reason for Warner’s unparallel high and consistent earnings advantage over the other studios and DC has already been a part of that and we are now going to outline an even more expansive plan for that in the coming months.”

It will be interesting to hear what they have to say in their big announcement, but it seems they are taking a leaf out of Marvel’s book and are working their way towards a big team movie with the Justice League. The next decade should be a good one for comic book movie lovers!

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We have been getting lots of superhero movie news recently. Iron Man 2 and Green Lantern are edging closer to filming, and Marvel are starting to line up the dots for the big Avengers movie in 2012. However, if you look close enough you will realise one thing. It’s a cockfest. After the bad apples such as Catwoman, Elektra and Aeon Flux, studios have steered clear of female driven superhero movies. However now according to IESB the Wonder Woman movie is picking up speed at Warner Bros.

There was a regime change late last year over at Silver Pictures, Andrew Roma is now the man in charge and will be the man spearheading the live action Wonder Woman project along with mega producer Joel Silver.

Sources in the Burbank studios have confirmed there is quite a bit of movement on the WW front. With Green Lantern going into production this year, it looks like Princess Diana may finally get the go ahead from WB.

WB and Silver Pictures are in the early stages but they are eager to get started on the movie. Sources tell IESB that WB is looking for new writers on the project and have been taking pitches the last few weeks.

In the past there have been a number of starts and stops with the Wonder Woman movie. Megan Gale was set to play the character in Justice League: Mortal, however Warner Bros. have put the movie on told for the time being. They have made it clear that they want to follow Marvel’s lead by introducing the characters in solo movies and then joining them together in a movie further down the line. Green Lantern will be Warner Bros. first outing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were planning on Wonder Woman to follow him.

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Director George Miller confirmed on a Sydney-based morning talk show this morning that he is no longer involved with the Justice League movie in any capacity.

From Dark Horizons:

According to scooper ‘Steve’ he says that Miller indicated that if the project does get going again, he expects that it’ll be recast as “the studios seem to want bigger stars in their superhero movies now.”

Miller must be disappointed, as he tried his hardest to get it made. He attepted to get it filmed in Australia so it could benefit from the same tax benefits as Baz Lurhmans Australia, however that was rejected. There was also some negative buzz surrounding the casting and the use of characters such as Batman and Superman, who already have movies of their own. The fact that this movie has ground to a halt is a good thing.

From what we have heard it looks like DC and Warner Bros intend to follow Marvel’s lead by giving characters their own movies, then joining them up for the group movie. From the looks of things Green Lantern will be first on the list, as production could start sometime next year.

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Does anyone remember the days when Justice League: Mortal was actually on the road to being made? Well director George Miller had the cheek to hire an actor to play Batman, who wasn’t Christian Bale. (This was before The Dark Knight was released and dominated the world, so I will let him off slightly). The actor goes by the name of Armie Hammer, and E! Online spoke to him about the (now deceased) movie.

Hammer still hopes the movie will get made, and he told E! that he and his castmates went through several months of intense physical training before production stopped:

“I would spend hours training with actual guns to prepare me for this stuff,” Hammer said. “It was very intense. Our workout regimens were so rigorous that most of us would vomit.”

He added, “We weren’t trying to get ourselves aesthetically good looking. We were trying to get ready for the demands of shooting.”

He also talked about being fitted for the Batman costume, making it sound like they were pretty far along in the preproduction on the movie:

He’s already been fitted for the superhero costume, which he says features functioning equipment, including trademark Batman weapons like spring-loaded titanium Bat-erangs. “I was looking down, and I was thinking, This is the best,” Hammer said off the first time he put on the entire ensemble. “Then I stood up, and they turned me around, and I faced a mirror—there was Batman. But then it hit me like a ton of bricks—it’s not just Batman, it’s me!”

After the success of The Dark Knight I don’t think I could accept anyone else playing Bruce Wayne within the next decade. Thankfully, the Justice League movie won’t be happening anytime soon so we don’t have anything to worry about.

I wonder if Armie saw The Dark Knight?

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Despite having a wealth of characters from the DC world, Warner Bros have only managed to make Batman profitable with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Catwoman had the wrong creative team and Superman Returns didn’t meet expectations. More recently they have been trying to follow Marvel’s road by having a team movie, the Justice League. However the main problems were that fans didn’t particularly want it, and neither did Australia.

From Variety:

“We’re not off the notion of a Justice League,” Robinov says. “There’s a massive interest and knowledge in the comicbook industry and it takes time to sort of catch up and understand the characters and the history, where they’ve intersected with each other and what their worlds are. That’s part of the education that we’re going through.”

“These are big, iconic characters,” [Greg] Noveck says. “So when you make them into a movie, you’d better be shooting for a pretty high standard. You’re not always going to reach it, but you have to be shooting for it. We’re going to make a Justice League movie, whether it’s now or 10 years from now. But we’re not going to do it and Warners is not going to do it until we know it’s right.“

This is the best thing that could happen. Batman and Superman already have their franchises (well Batman has anyway), so to cross them over and mix them up would be stupid and it wouldn’t work.

So where do DC and Warner Bros go from here?

“We’re having a lot of internal discussions on it,” Horn says. “We haven’t committed to any change at DC at this point,” adding that both Warners and DC are committed to turning “the properties into viable movie product in an intelligent way so that we introduce them like planes on a runway. They have to be set up the right way and lined up the right way and all take off one at a time and fly safe and fly straight.”

So they have decided to do what Marvel are doing. Marvel have launched Iron Man, rebooted The Incredible Hulk, and will soon be giving us Thor and Captain America. All of these will then join together for a big old bash in The Avengers movie in 2011.

DC’s first solo movie off the blocks will most likely be Green Lantern, which already has a script and is apparently ready to go.

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Some thought that the Justice League movie was placed back in development hell after attempts to film in Australia didn’t work out. However, director George Miller recently spoke to the Herald Sun about how good Megan Gale’s audition as Wonder Woman was, and that filming would be taking place next year.

The Aussie Oscar-winner said the glamazon “blitzed her opposition” when she read for the part of Wonder Woman in the sci-fi production.

“She got the job because she blitzed her screen test. I mean, I had no idea she was so good,” Miller said.

“She walked into our office in Sydney and read the part. She has done some Italian movies, but I didn’t think she would be as good as she was.

“But once she read we all looked around at each other and said, ‘Well, there’s no question’.”

Initially slated to be filmed Down Under, Miller conceded production had been moved offshore, with a plan to resume filming next year.

It seems DC want to rival Marvel in the movie department, with Marvel working their way towards an Avengers movie. A few script reviews for the Justice League movie have been rather negative, so maybe George Miller and friends will be able to improve it before filming begins at some point next year.

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