It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to call Warner Bros.’ handling of their DC properties over the last decade shambolic, and that might even be putting it lightly. The studio has stumbled from one approach to another, failing to settle on a unified tone or creative direction, something that doesn’t look as though it’ll change at any point in the near future.
Henry Cavill was cast as Superman over ten years ago, with Man of Steel designed as the launchpad for a sprawling shared mythology that would theoretically compete with Kevin Feige’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. Eleven movies were announced on the same day back in October 2014, but here we almost seven years later and only six of them actually made it to the big screen.
In the interim, dozens of projects were touted and then abandoned including Gotham City Sirens, Lobo, Nightwing, Cyborg, Harley Quinn and the Joker, Green Lantern Corps and many more, while Joker told a standalone story and managed to become the highest-grossing R-rated film ever and found plenty of awards season glory, which was painfully ironic when WB didn’t even want to make it in the first place.
The latest maneuver to piss off the fans is the announcement that J.J. Abrams and Ta-Nehisi Coates are rebooting Superman, shunting Cavill’s Kryptonian further into the background despite the fact that he extended his contract last year, even though he hasn’t suited up since the Justice League reshoots ended back in 2017. However, new reports are claiming that Abrams’ blockbuster will exist independently of the rest of the DC Films slate similar to Joker, meaning that the door remains open for Cavill to return and that this new Big Blue Boy Scout won’t be replacing him. That being said, there’s been so much confusion surrounding the company’s plans for its superhero roster that there’s no way we’ll be getting a definite answer for a while yet.
