It Sounds Like There’s Big Trouble with The DC Film Projects at Warner Bros.
Last week, news broke that The Flash movie director Seth Grahame-Smith dropped out of the film project due to creative differences with Warner Bros. I’m actually OK with that for the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of what Grahame-Smith has done in the films he’s been involved with. I have always felt that The Flash should have had a better director.
The script for the movie was written by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The LEGO Movie, 21 Jump Street), and Ezra Miller is set to play the Scarlet Speedster. We got our first look at the character in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing how this solo film turns out.
There seems to be more to the story than just Grahame-Smith dropping out of The Flash, though. According to Birth.Movies.Death, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes at the studio than is being revealed. According to their inside sources, a lot of issues are coming up with the upcoming slate of DC films.
The studio is reportedly “at odds” with Zack Snyder over Justice League, which he’s currently directing. The outlet says there have been “lots of fights between Snyder and the WB execs, and lots of pressure from Burbank on Snyder, who is shooting in London.” I’m not really that surprised by this news due to how Batman v Superman was received by audiences and critics. There’s really not much that the studio can do now because the film is already in production.
If this is all really true, you may be asking yourself why WB doesn't just pull the plug? It sounds like the studio is already so deep in the shit with Snyder that pulling the plug at this point and starting over would be a mess. They already started down this crazy path to bringing the DC universe to life, and they are determined to follow through with it regardless of how the films turn out.
That’s not all, though! There’s more discouraging news. The report goes on to say that Aquaman director James Wan could be the next filmmaker to bail on the studio over “creative differences.” They say that ”Wan is feeling a tremendous amount of trepidation about Aquaman...Aquaman needs Wan, and right now Wan is trying to decide if he needs that hassle."
That’s a shame to hear. I was actually really excited to see what Wan would do with the character. Hopefully he doesn’t end up dropping out of the project. If he does, then it’s proof that there is definitely trouble brewing over at Warner Bros. Wan can do anything he wants at this point, though, so if he did drop out maybe he could just focus his time and energy on developing Robotech!
What’s interesting about all this is that we’ve heard a few times from Snyder that the studio supports the filmmakers and allows them the freedom to do their own thing to bring these stories to life. But if all these rumors end up being true, then that obviously isn’t actually the case. It seems like Warner Bros. is making things more difficult for their filmmakers.
I'm curious to see how this all shakes out. In the end, no matter how good or bad these movies turn out to be, audiences and fans will still flock to see them because they are big DC properties. I think that's what WB is counting on.