DC wants to find its own Kevin Feige, compete with Marvel

Iron Man came out in 2008, kicking off the Marvel Cinematic Universe and beginning the most successful movie dynasty the world has ever known. Warner Bros., which has the license to produce movies based on DC superheroes, released Man of Steel in 2013, hoping to equal or even surpass Marvel.

It didn’t quite work out that way. They’ve had some hits — Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc — but also quite a few whiffs, like Batman v Superman and Justice League. Now, instead of creating a DC Extended Universe that can rival the MCU, Warner Bros. is going more piecemeal, releasing movies like Joker and The Batman which don’t really connect with each other.

But just a couple weeks back, WarnerMedia merged with Discovery. The man in charge of this new media empire is David Zaslav, and according to Variety, he has some ideas about how to revamp the DC brand so it’s back in fighting shape.

Warner Bros. wants to revamp DC Entertainment

If you look at them in isolation, DC movies do pretty well; they probably take in more money than they lose, at any rate. But in comparison to Marvel Studios, DC stuff lags far behind. Zaslav thinks that leveraging the DC brand is important to the newly combined company’s business strategy, and intends to do something about it. He thinks that characters like Superman have languished on the sidelines for too long, for example, so look out for another reboot of that in the next few years.

Zaslav also wants to find a manager who can manage the DC universe like Kevin Feige manages the Marvel one. That might be hard to find, since Feige has managed to revolutionize movies by combining his keen business instincts with his obvious love of the material, but apparently Zaslav has met with several candidates, including former 20th Century Studios executive Emma Watts. Although it’s unclear if what Zaslav wants is a creative mastermind or a business person who can “keep all the different factions at DC working more harmoniously,” as Variety puts it.

Warner Bros. is already trying to make of the most of its DC heroes by spinning them off into other projects, with Peacemaker (a spinoff of the movie The Suicide Squad) a hit on HBO Max and at least two TV spinoffs of The Batman on the way.

Can DC achieve its dreams of equaling Marvel onscreen?

Personally, I think that Marvel’s success at the movies (and now on TV) has been so singular and unprecedented that neither Warner Bros. nor anyone else should try to imitate it. I kind of like that DC has been doing its own thing lately, but I also get that executives look at Marvel, see dollar signs, and do whatever they have to do to get to that level. A change like this was always coming.

This is all high-level stuff that will probably take a while to kick into motion. Hopefully we’ll get some good movies and TV shows out of it.

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