2020 marks the first time in three years, and just the second time ever, that the DCEU has released two new movies in the same calendar year, but there are asterisks attached in both cases.
2017 brought Wonder Woman and Justice League, but most fans would rather pretend Joss Whedon’s take on the all-star blockbuster never existed, with Zack Snyder’s HBO Max exclusive already being viewed as the official version of the comic book epic. This year, meanwhile, Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984 have both faced major struggles at the box office, but at least Patty Jenkins’ sequel can lay the blame squarely at the door of COVID-19.
Warner Bros. have already made it clear that they’re planning to be at the forefront of the continued streaming revolution by releasing all of their 2021 titles on HBO Max the same day they hit theaters, and DC Films president Walter Hamada has now admitted that he’s looking to drop two DCEU movies per year on the platform, with the focus on smaller and riskier projects like Batgirl and Static Shock.
That’s in addition to John Cena’s Suicide Squad spinoff series, Matt Reeves’ companion show to The Batman and J.J. Abrams’ Justice League Dark, so it appears obvious that the studio are keen to emulate the huge volume of MCU and Star Wars titles in the works for Disney Plus.
The DCEU is only nine movies old with The Suicide Squad, The Flash, Aquaman 2, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Black Adam and Wonder Woman 3 all in various stages of development, but the franchise has still announced twice as many projects that have never been made as ones that will actually come to life on either the big or small screen, meaning there’s plenty of work to be done.