There is some pretty big industry news this morning regarding Warner Bros and DC Comics. Warner Bros Group President Jeff Robinov recently had his contract re-upped by Time Warner, and his first order of real business will be to restructure the stand alone DC Comics business. Don’t think this has anything to do with the Disney Marvel buyout, because this little restructure has been quietly in the works for a couple of years now. Here is what we know so far.

DC Comics will be Jeff Robinov’s direct responsibility with Diane Nelson, DC will report to them. Nelson is the the woman who shepherded WB’s take on Harry Potter since 2000. Nelson is also president of Warner Premiere, the direct to DVD label that has released stuff like Green Lantern: First Flight. The plan is to have her do the same with DC Comics biz.

For the last few months Robinov has been meeting with producers such as, Chuck Roven, Joel Silver, and Akiva Goldman and called back all their high profile DC titles in development like The Flash and Wonder Woman. So now we know what’s been going on with those projects… nothing.

What surprised these producers even more was when they learned that Robinov’s strategy is to severly limit the number of gross participants on the projects. The producers were told that they may get the titles back to develop, but with far less rich deals. According to insiders:

Jeff always wanted some kind of oversight of DC, and now he wants Warner’s to hold onto ownership.

Apparently Joel Silver who is friends with Robinov was allowed to continue with his project The Losers under his Dark Castle Productions, but that his 10 years of developing Wonder Woman is dead.

According to deadlinehollywood Robinov went to management as soon as he took over as president of Warner Bros Pictures Group in January 2007 with a proposal to take over DC Comics. It has taken this long to get it done. Paul Levitz, DC Comics president and publisher, was invited to stay with the company. But now he will have to report directly to Nelson, something he isn’t to happy about. In fact, DC Comics insiders are saying that Paul Levitz will transition out of DC after 35 years at the comic book publisher instead of accepting a demotion.This will happen after a new publisher is sought and found.

Prior to this Levitz reported directly to Warner Bros Chairman Alan Horn, who ran the film division that screwed up nailing down all the legal rights to Watchmen before they made the movie. His biggest failure though has been to leave some of the most valuable DC Comics characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Justice League in movie development limbo. Only Batman has a strong ongoing live action franchise.

The future films of all our favorite DC Comic book characters now rests in the hands of Diane Nelson. If she can bring them together with the same amount of love and care that she has brought to the Harry Potter films then this is a very good move. What do you all think?