Last week, Warner Bros. caused a lot of ink to flow following the decision to cancel the film Batgirl altogether, despite having been filmed and almost finished in terms of post-production and whose release was set for the end of the year. on the HBO Max streaming platform. Many Internet users were indignant at such a decision, then demanding the release of Batgirl from Warner, who obviously remained deaf to these calls. We had to wait for the presentation of the firm’s quarterly financial results to better understand this decision and the change in strategy made with the merger of Discovery within it. During a question and answer session, David Zaslav, who is the current CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, took the stage to give an update on the future of the company and discuss the future plans he has in mind. head, him and his team. This is where we learned of a DC Universe reset, with a 10-year plan similar to what Marvel did with Disney. Not going around the bush, David Zaslav even cited Kevin Feige, the boss of Marvel Studios, as being a source of inspiration.
There is going to be a dedicated team with a 10-year plan that will focus solely on DC. It’s very close to the business model that Alan Horn and Bob Iger implemented with Kevin Feige at Disney. We are confident that we can build a much stronger, sustainable growth business over the long term with DC Comics. The idea is to focus on quality. A movie won’t be released until it’s ready.
We have the ambition to turn around Warner, but also to produce films with a high production quality, and when we look at the licenses that we have, DC is one of the priorities for us. Take a look: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, these are brands that are known all over the world. The possibility of making them shine through great stories is a great opportunity for us. We decided to start all over again. We restructured the company. We will concentrate better now.
While David Zaslav has evaded the Batgirl case, he has however been positive towards the other films such as Black Adam Shazam 2, Aquaman 2 and The Flash (despite the Ezra Miller case) which he considers to be great. It has been mentioned that Warner Bros Discovery will focus more on big brands such as Batman, Superman and even the Joker, whose sequel “Folie à Deux” has been confirmed for October 4, 2024, through a small teaser. Likewise, Lady Gaga has been confirmed as Harley Quinn, alongside Joaquin Phenix. It remains to be seen how much the DC Universe will be reshaped, from which film, and above all who will be at the head of this new identity…