DC Studios co-presidents James Gunn and Peter Safran have unveiled their 8-10-year plan for the DC Universe, and it’s pretty ambitious! These guys have a lot of movies and shows in the hopper, and some of them sound pretty interesting.
Of course, we’re losing some things, too. Gunn and Safran have confirmed that Henry Cavill will not be returning to play Superman, and we wouldn’t count on seeing the Rock back as Black Adam, either. They also canceled a planned third Wonder Woman movie with Gal Gadot.
Will their stale of new projects make up for it? Let’s go through each and find out. We’re gonna rank these based on how interesting they look to us, with the most interesting at the top and the least at the bottom. Do you agree? Sound off!
1. Lanterns
According to James Gunn, Lanterns is “a big premiere HBO television show” about a pair of Green Lanterns — John Stewart and Hal Jordan — who “discovery a terrifying mystery that ties into our larger story of the DCU.”
There are few things that stand out about this one to me. First of all, it sounds like it’s on HBO proper, which gives me some confidence that it will have a good deal of polish; HBO can usually be depended upon to turn out a good series. Second, compared to some of the other superheroes in the DC canon — namely Batman and Superman — Green Lantern hasn’t been as overexposed, at least not in live-action. It’ll be fun to get to know some characters who aren’t quite as iconic, even though both Hal Jordan and John Stewart have their followers.
And I’m intrigued by the premise. A superhero show about space cops with powers who spend most of their time detecting on Earth? And Gunn compared it to the moody, atmospheric HBO drama True Detective? Okay, with the right people in charge, it sounds like that could be interesting.
2. The Brave and the Bold
Okay, I know I just said that Batman was overexposed, and he is; right now, Matt Reeves is working on a sequel to The Batman, where the Caped Crusader will once again be played by Robert Pattinson. Meanwhile, Joaquin Phoenix is starring in the Batman spinoff series Joker, Diedrich Bader voices Bruce Wayne on the HBO Max series Harley Quinn, and there are still animated movies about him coming out. Guy is everywhere, and has been for years.
That said…there’s a reason he’s so overexposed; Batman is the coolest superhero in history, and there seems to be no end of ways to approach his story. The new movie The Brave and the Bold will be about Bruce Wayne and his son Damian, who in the comics becomes the newest Robin. He’s a bit of a hellion: difficult, brash and deadly.
While Robin has long appeared in comics and in animated shows, we’ve seen very little of him in live-action, not since 1997’s disastrous Batman & Robin. So it’ll be cool to see the Batman-and-Robin dynamic in action on the big screen once more.