[Movie] Justice League - Page 6

On November 28 2017 06:51 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


That's the issue that many of us have with the movie. For me, I was hoping it would be the DC equivalent of The Avengers, in the sense that now there's a cool team of heroes who can work together and achieve what the individual could not. But it's not that, because the Avengers have multiple heroes who actually pull their own weight (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, etc.). This movie formed the Justice League, sure, but it also cemented the idea that the Justice League is 99% Superman and 1% other-"heroes"-making-sure-Superman-doesn't-die.

If at first your movie studio doesn’t succeed, restructure and restructure again. After Justice League received subpar reviews and underwhelming box office returns, Warner Bros. is looking to shake-up its DC Films division—again. Per Variety, DC Films co-head and producer Jon Berg will step down, and the studio is considering bringing DC’s film operations closer to Warner Bros. proper.

The establishment of a “DC Films” with film producer Berg and DC Comics veteran Geoff Johns as co-heads came after the failure of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and was WB’s attempt to emulate Marvel Studios and their president Kevin Feige, who is not only an experienced film producer but has an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel comics. Although the first film with this pair in charge, Wonder Woman, was undoubtedly a success, the same couldn’t be said for Justice League. Johns is expected to stay on in at least an advisory capacity.

Warner Bros. is also considering bringing its DC films operation under the same umbrella as their other studios. Although Marvel Studios is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, it generally operates independently—Fox and Sony, on the other hand, are more directly hands on with their X-Men and Spider-Man franchises, respectively. A move from WB would probably resemble Fox and Sony more so than Disney.

Justice League received a 40% score on Rotten Tomatoes (our review here ) and grossed $570.3 million worldwide in three weeks; in comparison, the first Avengers film made up to $1.5 billion in the same amount of time. Production problems plagued Justice League—already coming off of a lambasted Batman v Superman, WB executives were quite skittish about the future of the franchise. According to a large spread by The Wrap, the changing of hands from Zack Snyder to Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon, clashing visions and studio interference and an overall rushed production led to a “Frankenstein” (although really, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster) of a film.

A replacement for Berg will be announced sometime soon. The next DC movie will be Aquaman directed by James Wan (The Conjuring, Furious 7) for a release date of Dec. 21, 2018.

New reports say that Zack Snyder was fired from Justice League, months before he publicly shared that he was no longer involved with the project.

Entertainment reporter Josh Dickey is leaving the industry, and tweeted a series of links with some context about his time there. One of his claims was that Snyder didn’t leave the project voluntarily, but was instead fired from the film, according to unnamed sources.

Collider is backing up Dickey’s tweet, reporting that Warner Bros. fired Snyder in January or February 2017 — months before Snyder announced he was stepping away from the project to deal with the personal matters after the death of his daughter.

“I’d heard similar things from separate sources over the last year as well,” Collider’s Matt Goldberg wrote. “I also heard that Snyder’s rough-cut of the movie was ‘unwatchable’ (a word that jumped out at me because it’s rare you hear two separate sources use the exact same adjective). Of course, even if that’s true, there’s obviously more to the story since rough cuts can be fixed up with reshoots, rewrites, etc.”

The sensitive nature of Snyder’s family tragedy played a part in keeping this story from being reported, according to some, but it also seems true that no one was willing to go on the record to confirm or deny whether Snyder left or was fired.

Goldberg and Dickey’s reporting supports other developments that were happening at Warner Bros. at the time; developments that, in hindsight, foreshadowed Snyder’s work on future movies. In May 2016, just a few months after the disastrous release of Batman v Superman, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara removed Silverman as a supervisor overlooking the DC Comics film slate. The Wrap reported that Tsujihara was investing heavily in Warner Bros.’ DC Comics brand, and wanted films with better critical reception.

“It’s no secret the studio wanted better critical reception on the DC properties,” sources told The Wrap.

The Wrap later reported that executives at Warner Bros. first raised major concerns over Snyder’s work in mid-2016, after the release of Batman v Superman. Those same executives pleaded with Silverman, who worked with Snyder on 300, to remove him from Justice League and give the project to someone else. Silverman refused. Less than a year later, in December 2016, Silverman was ousted from the company.

Variety reported that company executives were not happy with the performances of other DCEU films, including Suicide Squad, which Silverman oversaw. It was only a few months after, based on Dickey’s and Goldberg’s reports, that Snyder was also fired from the production.

We’ve reached out to Warner Bros. for comment. The company has spoken on Snyder’s future involvement with the DC films in the past.

“Zack Snyder is not currently scheduled to direct a DC film, but he is serving as a producer or executive producer on upcoming DC pictures such as Wonder Woman 2 and Aquaman,” Warner Bros. told Polygon in a previous statement.

On February 23 2018 10:44 Plansix wrote:
Damn, that with the story that Snyder was let go from Justice League it being a mess, I think it is safe to say that DC movies are fucked.