DC Entertainment is Rethinking Their Movie Universe Strategy and They Will De-emphasize The DCEU Connections in Their Films
Ever since Warner Bros. started building their DCEU films with Man of Steel, they have been trying to get a handle on things and figure out what it is that the fans want out of these films. I think most people can agree that they got everything right with Wonder Woman, but what happens now? Well, during a recent interview with Vulture, Geoff Johns and Diane Nelson address the future of their DC films and it sounds like after Justice League comes out, there are going to be some changes with their strategy.
They are going to start de-emphasizing the idea that these movies have to share the same world and crossover with each other. The continuity of the films will stay in place, though. Nelson explains:
"Our intention, certainly, moving forward is using the continuity to help make sure nothing is diverging in a way that doesn’t make sense, but there’s no insistence upon an overall storyline or interconnectivity in that universe."
That will certainly change the DCEU in a big way after Justice League is released. It's going to be interesting to see how this all works as they move forward, but one thing is for sure and that is that it will free up the filmmakers to be more creative with the movies they want to make. They don't have to really worry about everything fitting together.
Maybe, trying to do what Marvel was doing just wasn't working for them. They couldn't get it right. To Nelson and Johns, Wonder Woman is the perfect example of what the future of their films might look like because it was pretty much a standalone movie, but it was set in the same universe. The movie worked and they want to move forward with that formula. Johns says:
"The movie’s not about another movie. Some of the movies do connect the characters together, like Justice League. But, like with Aquaman, our goal is not to connect Aquaman to every movie."
Nelson adds:
"Moving forward, you’ll see the DC movie universe being a universe, but one that comes from the heart of the filmmaker who’s creating them."
I actually think this is a smart move for the studio. Not everything needs to be an intricately connected universe. Hell, there's a chance that Marvel will be changing things up like this as well after they are done with Avengers 4! Kevin Feige has talked about it in the past saying they may not even have a phase 4 as things move forward.
Johns goes on to address the talk and rumors of Warner Bros. not really having a strategy with these films, admitting:
"Some of the stuff is true, some of it isn’t true. When we talk about things or we’re making deals for people to develop scripts or whatever, sometimes, things leak; sometimes, things are misreported, and it’s frustrating. Because we do wanna go out there and talk about what our strategy is, and this stuff just muddies the water. There’s a lot of internal conversations going on about, How do we help kind of clean that up a bit?"
Now that Warner Bros. has a strategy that they feel is going to work for them, the filmmakers, and their films, I'm excited to see how these upcoming films turn out! After Justice league, We've got Aquaman, Shazam!, The Flash, Cyborg, The Batman, Suicide Squad 2, The Joker and Harley Quinn film, and the Joker origin film. Hopefully, they all turn out to be great films that are just as good or better than Wonder Woman.
What do you all think about the new direction that the DC films are headed?