It looks as if Warner Bros is ploughing headlong into its pre-existing plans for the DCEU. They have recently announced that, despite Justice League‘s universally negative reception and shockingly poor earnings at the box office, it will not effect future plans for the film franchise. This means that, unless something should change drastically in upcoming months, Aquaman will still release next December, Shazam will continue to assemble its cast and Flashpoint will still reset the whole film canon back to square one.
Although the franchise has never been especially well received by the public, it has not been until Justice League‘s release that the DCEU has started to seriously hemorrhage money. The superhero team-up allegedly cost somewhere North of $300 million dollars and, after advertising and distribution has been factored in, would need to make back over $700 million just to break even. As it stands, the film is estimated to cost Warner Bros somewhere between $100 and $150 million.
This has cast serious doubt on future DCEU movies — namely Aquaman which has the unfortunate distinction of being based around the least interesting of this lackluster version of the iconic DC lineup — being able to perform at the box office. After all, if all of DC’s heroes can’t turn a profit when they’re crammed into the same movie, what chance do the individual heroes (at least the ones not named Wonder Woman) have?
Warner Bros madcap solution to their cinematic woes is Flashpoint: a solo Flash film that, following the comic its based on, feature Barry Allen mucking about in various timestreams, meeting alternate versions of the Justice League and ultimately rewriting the DCEU’s history thus far to erase all of the most troubling and least popular films within it. And, by any conceivable measure, that would be literally every film other than Wonder Woman.
This is ostensibly their last chance to win back the crowds that have so far abandoned the series after they failed to produce the same robust canon of films that Marvel has over a comparable timeframe. It’s their Days of Future Past: an iconic story built into the franchise’s narrative DNA that can undue all the ill-considered, slipshod and ruinous installments while simultaneously rebuilding audience trust in their ability to produce the same kind of high-end blockbusters that defined the entire genre in decades past. If they stumble on this one too, there’s no telling how long it will take fans to forgive, forget and return to theaters for the latest DC-branded blockbuster.
As it turns out, we won’t have to wait long to find out how this plan works out for Warner Bros. According to Flash actor Ezra Miller, the film is will start filming “pretty soon.” Even for the Flash, that’s pretty fast. The film is currently slated for a 2020 release (although Miller’s statement would suggest something closer to 2019, as the immediate follow-up to Aquaman). Notably, the film still doesn’t have a director, even though Warner Bros has been courting Back to the Future helmsman Robert Zemeckis for months.
Whether Warner Bros can regain movie-goers’ faith in their franchise by retconning out just about every godawful film in it remains to be seen. But if Miller’s comments are any indication, they’re as eager to move past this disastrous chapter in their filmography as Ben Affleck is.
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