DC Universe Announces Superman: Legacy, Batman & Robin Movie, Wonder Woman Prequel Series
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The post DC Universe Announces Superman: Legacy, Batman & Robin Movie, Wonder Woman Prequel Series appeared first on Consequence.
At a press event on Monday, January 30th, new DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran welcomed media to the Warner Bros. lot to the future of the new DC Universe. The new direction includes a fresh Superman film written by Gunn, a new introduction to the Batman family, a Wonder Woman TV prequel series, and much more.
Gunn and Safran met with a writer’s room that included Drew Goddard (The Martian), Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight), Christina Hobson (The Flash, Batgirl), Christal Henry (Watchmen) and Tom King (DC Comics’ Batman, Mister Miracle). “We sat down in a room for a few days and we started to bash out what the basic overall plan could be,” said Gunn. “Not so much that it ties your wrists, but enough that we know what the basic story is, where we’re going. And it’s something that we’ll continue to do.”
To that end, Safran and Gunn aim at releasing two films and two TV series per year, though they won’t force projects into production to meet that goal unless the scripts are completely ready. The pair also said the door remains open for Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ezra Miller (The Flash), and Zachary Levi (Shazam) to return to their characters, while Viola Davis is locked in as Amanda Waller for an HBO Max series called Waller. Henry Cavill, however, is still officially out as Superman.
Dubbed “Gods and Monsters,” Chapter 1 of the new DCU will exist within a multiverse, though the first run of titles will all live in a singular universe. Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II, Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie á Deux, and the in-development Superman movie from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates will continue to exist outside the DCU under the new DC Elseworlds branding. The animated Teen Titans Go! and Reeve’s Batman spin-off centered on Colin Farrell’s Penguin will also fall under the Elseworlds brand.
Here’s a rundown of what James Gunn and Peter Safran have planned for the future of the DC Universe:
Superman: Legacy
DC Comics
Launching the DCU with a Superman story makes sense, and that’s what Superman: Legacy will do with its targeted July 11th, 2025 debut. Penned by Gunn (with Safran hoping the filmmaker “can be persuaded, perhaps, to direct it as well”), the story will focus on “Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing,” according to Safran. “He is the embodiment of truth, justice and the American way. He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old-fashioned.”
The Authority
DC Comics
Superman: Legacy will lead to a less well-known group of characters in The Authority. Originally created as part current DC Comics chief Jim Lee’s Wildstorm publisher by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, The Authority was folded into the DC comics universe during 2011’s New 52 continuity reboot. The story centers on a group of superhumans who have a decidedly less idealistic idea of what it means to save the world.
“It isn’t just a story of heroes and villains, and not every movie and TV show is going to be about good guy versus bad guy,” Gunn said. “There are people that are very questionable, like the Authority, who basically believe that you can’t fix the world in an easy manner, and they take things into their own hands.”
The project is currently being written, though a screenwriter was not revealed.
The Brave and the Bold
DC Comics
Based on a classic Batman storyline from Grant Morrison (a comic writer Gunn said was “exceptionally influential” to their plans for the DCU), The Brave and the Bold will introduce a new Batman alongside expanding members of “the Bat family.” First up is Robin, who for the first time in cinema will be the Damian Wayne incarnation. Damian is Batman’s biological son, a fact unknown to Bruce Wayne until the boy was eight. Now a 10-year-old, Damian is Gunn’s “favorite Robin,” “a little son of a bitch,” an “assassin” and a “murderer.”
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
DC Comics
Centered on Superman’s cousin, Kara Zor-El, this Supergirl movie will be based on King’s 2021-2022 run on the Woman of Tomorrow comic. Described as a “much more hardcore” hero than Superman, Gunn said the movie will emphasize “the difference between Superman, who was sent to Earth and raised by loving parents from the time he’s an infant, versus Supergirl, who was raised on a rock chip off of Krypton, and watched everyone around her die and be killed in terrible ways for the first 14 years of her life.”
Swamp Thing
DC Comics
Referencing the diversification of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by introducing characters like Groot and Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy, Gunn said they were “one-upping” that concept with Swamp Thing. A horror movie that will “investigate the dark origins of Swamp Thing,” the movie will be a “much more horrific film,” but Swamp Thing himself is still lined up to interact with other characters in the DCU.
Creature Commandos Animated Series
Warner Bros. Animation
Gunn wrote every episode of this in-production cartoon, which seems to have ties to his The Suicide Squad film: Weasel and Rick Flag Sr. will both be members of the Creature Commandos. The 1980s comic series saw Frankenstein’s monster, a werewolf, a vampire, and a gorgon fighting Nazis, though the lineup has frequently changed throughout the years. They also appeared in three animated shorts on Cartoon Network.
Creature Commandos was apparently the first project the new DC Studios head greenlit, and there’s a promise that the voice cast will bring the characters to live action elsewhere in the DCU.
Waller TV Series
Viola Davis as Amanda Waller (DC Studios)
Gunn will have to put Peacemaker Season 2 on hold while he works on Superman: Legacy, so the story of the hit HBO Max series will instead continue on Waller. “Team Peacemaker” will appear alongside Davis’ Amanda Waller, who was (spoiler) outed as the head of Task Force X at the end of Peacemaker’s first season.
Christal Henry and Jeremy Carver (creator of Doom Patrol) will executive produce what Gunn calls “the greatest show ever.” Both Waller and Creature Commandos are expected to debut prior to Superman: Legacy.
Lanterns TV Series
DC Comics
A Green Lantern TV shows has been in the works for years, most recently with Greg Barlanti developing on for HBO Max. That series is no longer moving forward as Safran and Gunn look towards a “huge HBO-quality event” dubbed Lanterns. “Greg’s vision was more of a space opera,” Safran explained. “Our vision is much more True Detective, terrestrial-based investigation story.”
With Hal Jordan (the test pilot previously portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in 2011’s much derided Green Lantern) and John Stewart (an ex-marine) as the two Green Lanterns leading the story, the show will follow a mystery that Safran promises “plays a really big role leading us into the main story that we’re telling across our film and television.”
Paradise Lost TV Series
DC Studios
A prequel to the story of Wonder Woman, Paradise Lost will be set on the island of Themyscira before the birth of Diana. Described as a “Game of Thones-ish story,” the show will center on the “political intrigue behind a society of all women,” said Safran.
Gunn further explained, “How did that come about? What’s the origin of an island of all women? What are the beautiful truths and the ugly truths behind all of that? And what’s the scheming like between the different power players in that society?”
Booster Gold TV Series
DC Comics
Where Swamp Thing will put a horror lens on the DCU, the Booster Gold series will lean into comedy. A fan-favorite who never made it to the levels of DC’s more popular heroes, Booster Gold is a 25th century “loser” and former football star named Mike Carter. Using a time machine on display in the Metropolis Space Museum, Carter travels back to the present day with some basic future technology that he uses to masquerade as a superhero.
“Basically, Booster Gold is imposter syndrome as a superhero,” explained Gunn.
Though it apparently wasn’t mentioned during the press event, it’s worth noting Booster Gold has a longstanding partnership with Blue Beetle, a character coming to the big screen in an August 18th film that was made before Gunn and Safran’s hiring.
The writing has been on the wall for the DCEU as fans have known it ever since WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc. formally merged in April 2022. With the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery facing mountains of debt and a critically capsized DCEU, executives took a hacksaw to their upcoming release schedule. The first casualty was Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s nearly completed Batgirl movie starring Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton, and Brendan Fraser, which was scrapped as a tax write-down rather than seeing its planned HBO Max release or selling it off to another studio.
While other productions like Angel Manuel Soto’s Blue Beetle got bumped up to a theatrical release, projects like Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams’ animated Batman series also got the axe. These moves led to the departure of Walter Hamada, who had led DC Films for the past four years.
Then, Black Adam received a lukewarm response, despite star Dwayne Johnson promoting it as the beginning of a new phase in the DCEU and even coaxing the studio to allow Henry Cavill to cameo as Superman. Shortly after that box office bomb’s release, WBD announced that Gunn (The Suicide Squad) and Safran (producer on Aquaman and Shazam!) would come aboard as co-Chairmen and CEO of the renamed DC Studios.
And then the cards really began to fall: Gunn and Safran announced they’d essentially be starting from scratch with the DC IP, meaning the upcoming Shazam! Fury of the Gods (March 17th), the long-troubled The Flash (June 16th), and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (December 25th) will be the last of what’s generally referred to as The Snyder-Verse. Even then, cameos from other Snyder era heroes, including Ben Affleck’s Batman and Cavill’s Superman, have purportedly been excised from those films. That’s no surprise, as reports from December indicated that a third Wonder Woman movie with Gal Gadot and Cavill’s future as the Man of Steel had both been iced.
The new co-chairs/CEOs took the DC Studios jobs knowing it wouldn’t be easy. Even with all its ups and downs, seeing fan-favorite iterations of these characters come to an end is a hard pill to swallow for many. But James Gunn and Peter Safran have their sights on a grand new future for the DC Universe, and we now have our first look at how diverse and intriguing that all might be.
DC Universe Announces Superman: Legacy, Batman & Robin Movie, Wonder Woman Prequel Series
Ben Kaye
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