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Warner Brothers Announces 10 New DC Comics Movies
wired_parrot writes After being criticized for being slow to respond to Marvel's string of blockbuster superhero movies, Warner Brothers finally announced their plan for DC comic universe movie franchise. Yesterday at their annual shareholder meeting, WB announced 10 DC comics movies. The studio has unveiled an ambitious schedule that features two Justice League films, plus standalone titles for Wonder Woman, Flash, Shazam (Captain Marvel), Green Lantern, Cyborg and even Aquaman. Also announced were plans for 3 Lego movies and a three-part Harry Potter spinoff.
Aquaman sucks!
Everything these days is reboots, reboots of reboots, sequels, prequels, sequels to prequels, prequels to sequels, comic book adaptations, games adaptations, movies made from tv series, remakes, remakes of remakes, japanese remakes.
Seems like they're not even trying anymore.
Won't even download.
He's a weird guy with a creepy fish fetish. Talking to the fish isn't a super power. I thought superhero films would have been dead by now.
"and a three-part Harry Potter spinoff."
Gotta keep beating that dead horse...
that's where the chaperone/driver sits.
"and a three-part Harry Potter spinoff."
Gotta keep beating that dead horse...
Are any of these horses alive? It's a horse epidemic of deathly proportions!
Grow up, America.
I never read comics when I was a kid.(well, thats not true, I read Heavy Metal)
I read sci-fi(Niven, Asimov, Bradbury, etc) and fantasy(Tolkien, Lovecraft, Howard, etc).
I don't get this thing with comics. Most of the comic book based films are ok at best...
Are they really going to make that many comic book based films?
That is just sad.
There are so many good sci-fi and fantasy books/stories out there.
It would be nice if something not ending in "man" was made into a film.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Frankly...beyond Superman and Batman, DC doesn't have much—at least that anyone has heard of and/or cares about. Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern do at least have some following, but they haven't aged well and I'm not sure they can translate to film nearly as well as, say, Iron Man.
IMHO, they'd be better off finding some more offbeat superheroes from their back catalog (a la Guardians of the Galaxy) or biting the bullet and inventing some new ones.
Still, Marvel has done an amazing job of refurbishing characters like Captain America and Thor, so maybe DC can do the same.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
OBFG
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
That the summary doesn't mention "Suicide Squad" as a forthcoming movie? Probably because most people still think superhero movies are kids movies and s-u-i-c-i-d-e is an inappropriate subject for kids movies.
Well, throw enough shit at the wall and something is bound to stick. If they need any more movie ideas here's a few.
"Slightly better than average guy"
"Stick figure man"
"Powdered Toast Man"
"Turd sandwich vs. Giant Douche"
"Harry Potter and the Raiders of the Lost Ark"
And "Didn't quite do it Justice League"
> Aquaman. Lego. Harry Potter
Jesus, that Justice League movie is gonna be a mess.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
movies that I won't go to see.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Come on, Miracleman - I just really liked that comic series.
Linky
I know, I know, it's legally impossible, but hey, I can always hope for a miracle, man!
Kimota!
Ryan Fenton
...it's gonna be all dark and stuff, guys! With sepia tone. Lots and lots of sepia tone. That's what the kids wanna see, right? Right?
Face it: Marvel characters are heroes we all, at some level, can relate to. Steve Rogers was a literal 90 lb weakling whose big heart worked with the super-soldier serum to make his body as heroic as his character. The X-Men were outcasts of society, hunted down by the very people they protected. Peter Parker was a nerd who got his powers by accident. Daredevil was blind. Those who grew up reading comics could relate to being the outcast, the geek at the edge of society, or someone overlooked.
Then you have DC. Other than Superman and Batman, they have nobody. Marvel's A-Team is Spider-Man and the X-Men. Their B-Team? The Hulk. Captain America. Thor. Iron Man. Dr Strange. Daredevil(the comic. Screw the movie). The Punisher(see Daredevil). The Fantastic Four. Marvel's B-Team could wipe the floor with DC's B-Team, and even beats their best in consistency(I'm looking at you, Stuperman IV and Batman and Robin). Plus, Marvel laid out a timeline and framework for the Marvel Universe, tying in everything to climaxes in Avengers movies. They are just better-written, have better character acting, and don't ever take themselves seriously. They have fun, so we have fun. DC can't get this, which is why they are destined to suck at the box office with anything that doesn't have Batman or Superman in the title.
...and ten POS films to go with them.
Fuck everything, we're doing ten movies.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
seems a better prospect than a Shazam or Aquaman movie.
They're crazy about these super-hero movies.
...better than this: http://www.cracked.com/blog/3-...
Comics provide Heroes
People Love Heroes
Profit !!
True SciFi is about 'what could be' this involves way to much thinking for the average movie goer. e.g Hulk SMASH ... cheer of applause,
Profit !!
Oh Boy! I can't wait! Aquaman is the best! /end sarcasm
When you say "Wizard of Oz", the movie I'm thinking of is of course Zardoz with the most badass Sean Connery ever, sporting "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony tail and Zapata moustache". The closing sequence with the allegretto from Beethoven's 8th still gives me shivers.
ignatius
DC does a lot better with TV than film. Consider
- Smallville was a huge success, very long run
- Arrow has been renewed twice, has a good audience and is doing very well
- The Flash looks like it has legs
- Gotham is getting rave reviews and looks like it has legs as well
Now let's look at their last couple of films:
- Man of Steel - OK this wasn't that bad
- Green Lantern - horrible
- Watchmen - Good movie but flopped
- Jonah Hex - Did anyone even know this movie came out?
- Superman Returns - horrible
The only saving grace has been the Nolan Batman films.
A DC comic movie or two makes some money, then they inundate us with more and more. Ain't going ot end pretty folks.
Movies seriously suck these days, makes me yearn for the days of serious actors, like Jar Jar Binks.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Who knew Shaquille Oneal could act? The only thing I don't get was he also played Steel.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what about Ender's Game? They completely failed to deliver the point of the book...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
One of the big problems DC comics has had since they no longer were, you know, about detectives, is that they generally tell the large stories like Marvel, but in a similar universe with fewer characters and often crazier origin stories and power sources.
I would argue that this difference has been a key to their success, but also has hurt them badly. Superman's origin story- the lone orphan survivor of an amazing race- resonates pretty ludicrously well, but the frequently paired Amazonian warrior or Galactic Cop both presuppose the existence of an entire universe of other stuff. Suddenly you need to have Amazonians in the modern era, and suddenly you need a galactic everything in place, and etc.
The Marvelverse, meanwhile, just takes random events and decides that they just happened to make a super hero now. Gamma radiation, radioactive spider bite, radiation in the upper atmosphere, random genetic powers- these are all "more realistic", but importantly, they don't drag a bunch of bullshit into the story from the sidelines. While Krypton conveniently self destructed, meaning that you can have as much or as little Krypton in your superman story as you need, most of the DC guys bring with them a whole wide world of junk you need to wade through and consider.
Even the divine characters are much more tied to reality for Marvel, with the Norse Gods being a fine set of guys to throw on screen any old time. Meanwhile, the "new gods" of DC are alien, bizarre, and require much devotion to understand what the heck is going on.
The Marvel universe has given us a ton of X-Men, Spiderman, the Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America, and they are all very well loved. Soon we'll see Dr. Strange as well. To explain these we have:
"Some people are mutants", "Radiation can give you powers", "there's some magic", "super serum, one time only offer".
Meanwhile, just to get us to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman, a reasonable superfriends crew, you end up needing Themyscira, a modern Amazon place, a whole race of Amazons to go with it, Atlantis as a living and actual kingdom under the sea, a whole race of martian (or alternately, several of them left with a destroyed race and a host of badguys that killed them), a whole lot of crazy stuff in Gotham, a bunch of alien superpower guys doling out willpower rings, meaning, oh yea, a galaxy spanning set of everything imaginable.
The other thing hurting them in a movie format is that they have a relatively light tone in many of the comics, and when they do not, they don't try to avoid whatever they are talking about. The race of goofy green aliens with the dumb rings are meaningful if they are being exterminated, and you feel bad for them, etc. Is a movie going to make you feel bad for these CGI freaks you learned about 15 minutes prior, in the space of two hours? Unlikely.
Instead, they will often darken everything, and just leave out most of the lore, trying to make them more marvel-like. Wonder woman is going to look like she's dressed as a robot, superman couldn't even keep his actual outfit and had to straight up murder some dude, etc.
They finally saw how much money those Marvel movies are pulling in and are hoping to get some of that money. I don't know if DC will be as profitable as Marvel though. I guess time will tell. About time you jumped on the bandwagon, Warner Bros!
A lot of these seem iffy - just names of characters - and there's development hell to get through. I can't imagine a pitch for Aqua Man that would make it to the screen. If we see one or two of these movies I'll be shocked. DC has a lot of archetype characters which are hard to translate into real plots anyone would care about. When you say Aqua Man or Wonder Woman, it's hard to translate that into something flesh and blood that you could film and anyone would want to watch. DC suffers from one-dimensional characters that are hard to tell stories about. All they do is reboot their comic book universe every few years because they run out of stories.
Meh... Marvel Stomps DC!
*ducks*
FLAME ON!
You have to remember, if you don't read comic books, nearly EVERY hero is from the "back-catalog." Beyond the Hulk (who was in a TV series and a couple of movies), and a passing familiarity that Captain America existed at one time, the remaining characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are virtually complete unknowns to the general public. Did a bunch of the other ones have active comic books going on when the movies were planned and were huge "hits" in every comic book store in the land? Maybe; I have no idea, and neither does most of the movie-going public. (It's telling that comic books aren't sold at general-interest stores anymore; the only place to buy them is specialty comic and hobby shops.)
And if Marvel can make Captain America, an obvious bit of cheesy WWII gung-ho patriotism, work for a modern audience, I don't see how you can say that Wonder Womam, Flash, and The Green Lantern "haven't aged well." They don't NEED a current "following" to be successful in a movie... the number of people that are the audience for comic-book movies is SO large compared to the number of comic book buyers, that it doesn't really matter how popular the hero is in current comic books; the people that buy comic books are only a tiny portion of the target audience.
The one any ONLY reason that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has worked out so well (without using the most recognizable properties in the stable) is due to Kevin Feige's unifying long-term vision. At the time Ironman rolled out the door, he had at least a hint of a plan ready to go, and quickly pulled it into a quality long-term plan tying everything together. But if every movie is planned out by a different producer, then it becomes Just A Bunch of Comic Book Movies. Would The Avengers have been nearly as successful if it merely happened to contain heroes from previous movie franchises? Heck no.
But DC clearly doesn't understand this, as the movie they are counting on to revive their fortunes, "Batman vs. Superman", contains two heroes who have never met or discussed each other, at all, in their respective movie franchises. Mashing them together is going to look like just that, a mash-up. When Avengers rolled out the door, the ONLY new characters were Hawkeye (yes, I know he had a cameo in Thor), and Smulders. The rest had been introduced quite clearly in previous movies, and were also clearly part of an over-arching theme. (Introduced first in the little credit snippets, and then rolling out to larger roles in the movies.)
Swallow? Come!
I'm waiting for a movie on Birdman and the galaxy trio.
Plantagenet reboot
More music, fewer hits
remade every 5 years or so. The recent round were the Valley Girl versions.
I did find the Zombie-R&J version earlier this year different.
He's obviously the most popular DC guy on the internet. In the movie they'll probably give him superman crushing strength just to round him out a little.
C'mon, we all know that the Wizard of Oz is a treatise on US monetary politics in the late 19th century (just a Faust II is a textbook on macroeconomics - and about as exciting).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz
ignatius
That was out in 2011