EXCLUSIVE: DC Films Betting Big On LEGION OF DOOM Moving Forward

• It opened to less than the first Iron Man– a far cry from the Avengers dollars the studio had been hoping for, and also a guarantee that it won’t crack a billion
• Critics liked it marginally better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
• The behind-the-scenes drama only really affected how hardcore fans view the film, since mainstream audiences awarded the film a higher CinemaScore than they gave to BvS and they contributed to the film having one of the best second weekend drops at the box office. While Man of Steel, BvS, and Suicide Squad cooled between 64%-69% in their second frames, JL dropped a relatively mild 56% despite heavy competition from Disney-Pixar’s Coco

So where do we go now? How is the studio assessing the damage? What’s the plan moving forward? These are the new questions that demand answers, now that we’re officially in the post-Zack Snyder, post-Justice League era of DC Films.

Some, like my friends over at Batman-On-Film, are firm in their belief that Warner Bros. is going to “blow the whole thing up” and reboot everything. Others are optimistic that DC Entertainment is going to stay the course and give us films that truly live up to their potential.

​I, myself, don’t know what to think. As someone who’s exhaustively versed in the history of DC and Warner Bros. (Seriously, CLICK HERE for an in-depth history lesson), I can’t help but think of the past as I try to predict what the future will hold.

See, back in the mid-00s, Warner Bros. was set to launch a shared universe long before Marvel Studios entered the picture. They first conceived of a “Batman vs Superman” film back in 2002, and then pivoted away from that when Superman Returns misfired and Batman Begins triumphed. At the time, the studio went to Christopher Nolan, said “Do whatever you want with Batman,” and the director went and put the character off on his own island where he couldn’t interact with the rest of the DC Universe. This put WB in a bind, as they still craved a shared universe, yet no one could deny that Nolan turned Batman into the King of Superheroes during his Dark Knight Trilogy.

At the time, after Green Lantern flopped and Justice League Mortal got scrapped, Warner Bros. was forced to wait until Nolan was done with Batman in 2012 before they could take another crack at a shared universe with 2013’s Man of Steel.

Now they’re at a similar fork in the road. Justice League today is what Superman Returns was then- a pricey misfire. So are they going to go to their current crop of filmmakers, like Patty Jenkins, James Wan, and Matt Reeves, and give them the same offer they gave Nolan? My BOF buddies, Bill and Rick, seem to think so. But I just can’t see Warner Bros. putting their shared universe on the shelf again.

Something that makes the outlook very different now than it was when SR stumbled out of the gate is that they’ve already got Aquaman in the can and Wonder Woman 2 is an absolute certainty. So the studio is already way too invested in this current continuity to simply let the directors reboot them and cut all ties to Snyder’s old DCEU.

With all of this in mind, I reached out to my sources over at Warner Bros., and I’ve been bugging them for anything they can tell me about what the studio is thinking about the future of the DC Films Universe.

For starters, they say things are relatively quiet right now. On some level, they’ve known for a while that Justice League wasn’t going to be the monumental smash hit they had once envisioned, so its dismal showing at the box office last week wasn’t exactly a shocker. Using very fitting terminology, they say that “there is hope” about the film’s legs, though, based on the aforementioned gentle second weekend drop. They also note that “the social media interaction has been good” for the film, which adds to their sense that the movie could put up some respectable numbers these next two weekends and inch towards at least breaking even. It also points to the fact that they’re un-phased by the negative backlash from hardcore Snyder fans.

While they couldn’t say, with certainty, what the future holds since the studio plans on being quiet about the DC slate for a bit, they did mention something that could be very, very telling:

(Beware Justice League *SPOILERS* Lie Ahead!)

…
..
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They’ve taken note of the buzz around the Legion of Doom post-credit sequence, and it looks like they may use the popularity of that concept as the connective tissue for the next few DC films.

In case you need a reminder, the post-credit sequence in question can now be seen right here:

You may have noticed that there’s been an awful lot of chatter about Joe Manganiello’s Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, in the last few days. The studio has allowed him to release a high-res image of himself as the character, and the once tight-lipped actor has had his lips loosened so that he can keep the hype going.

pic.twitter.com/cyAt06tWTT

— Joe Manganiello (@JoeManganiello) November 25, 2017

Bye Bye Darkseid, Hello Legion of Doom