The DC Comics back catalogue was always going to be one of the major selling points for HBO Max exclusive content, and Zack Snyder’s Justice League got things off to a solid start by bringing in massive viewership numbers and generating plenty of buzz, coming just a couple of months after Wonder Woman 1984 scoring the biggest streaming debut of 2020 following its simultaneous release.
Last year, DC Films president Walter Hamada outlined his intentions to develop and release comic book blockbusters exclusively for the platform, in addition to the raft of live-action and animated shows also in the works with the fingerprints of J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot all over them.
However, insider Daniel Richtman is now reporting that the directors of the DCEU are angry with the studio for sending so many films straight to streaming, but it’s hard to understand where this alleged fury is coming from. After all, Wonder Woman 1984 duo Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot were paid upwards of $10 million each when their sequel was announced for a hybrid debut, to offset any loss of earnings, and James Gunn is said to have negotiated a similar deal for The Suicide Squad.
Not only that, but there are currently ten DC adaptations officially set for release or in the works, and so far only two of them have been 100% locked in for HBO Max. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s Batgirl and Angel Manuel Soto’s Blue Beetle are skipping theaters, but that wouldn’t have been a surprise for the filmmakers given that Hamada outlined his intentions long before either directorial party signed on.
There’s no word on where Static Shock is heading just yet, though, while Emerald Fennell’s Zatanna was announced as a theatrical effort, so 20% of the lineup being dropped on HBO Max, which was revealed well ahead of time, hardly sounds like the grounds for an in-house mutiny. Unless, of course, there are more projects headed to the platform that we don’t know about, which could very well be the case.
