Many of you guys may have missed this – AT&T, the owners of Warner Bros. Media merged with the much smaller Discovery to become one massive conglomerate – Warner Bros. Discovery. This takeover took over almost a month ago, with Discovery now running the media side of things for both companies. It has been quite exciting for fans and filmmakers alike, as the previous management managed to isolate itself from the rest of the Hollywood industry with most of its major media-related decisions. With the schedule for the production company packed till the end of 2022, we do not expect many new changes to occur, except for the DC Extended Universe. With latest reports suggesting that Discovery wishes to restore Snyder’s DCEU – regardless if it is true or not, a DCEU revolution is coming.
The previous management had started to work towards a new DCEU Universe, which centered around the upcoming movie ‘Flash’ as well as their other hit Superhero movies ‘Wonder Woman’, ‘Aquaman’ and ‘Shazam’. The new Discovery management has so far not made any major changes to rectify this – which means that Warner Bros. Discovery will be taking this route for now. Although we have been hearing rumors about Zack Snyder’s return to the DC Universe and David Ayer’s special director’s cut for ‘Suicide Squad’, we still expect there to be some heavy oversight from the new management’s part – even if both directors are recalled.
Keep in mind, when compared to Marvel, the DCEU has done poorly on a Global scale, both in terms of popularity and reception. Even with the brilliant global reception for the four hour epic ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’, the fact remains, most of the DCEU movies have been critical disasters, despite its huge Box Office gains. ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ and ‘Suicide Squad’ were still failures, even with the aforementioned directors helming these projects. True there was heavy pressure from the previous management, but we expect Warner Bros. Discovery to do the same, similar to how Marvel Studios is currently running their “Superhero Film Empire”. Revolution is already happening within the DCEU, despite no obvious movements.
The latest trailer for the upcoming Suicide Squad dropped today. With this trailer, we can confirm that Warner Bros. Discovery has complete confidence in James Gunn’s vision and he has been allowed to create a movie of his desire. Even without Snyder, most of the film makers involved in the DCEU are making a movie centered around Snyder’s vision for the DCEU, which the new management hasn’t rectified yet. So far, the “changes” or lack thereof, has been good. Also, DCEU is currently going with the multiple universes storyline by interconnecting TV series, web series, animated series, movies and comic books – which means, with time, we could see both David Ayer and Zack Snyder eventually coming back to create their versions of the movie – if the newly resurrected DCEU starts to get better reception.
For now, we will have to wait and watch out for the first major DCEU change made by Warner Bros. Discovery.