Warner Brothers obviously had high hopes when they announced that they had scored multiple Academy Award winner Ben Affleck to play Batman/Bruce Wayne in their fledgling DC Expanded Universe.
WB was so confident, that they went ahead and wrote him into their next big picture, ‘Suicide Squad’. Fans had not fully embraced “Bat-Fleck” and fans who turned out for ‘SS’ almost despite him being in it.
The DCEU was on shaky ground and then came ‘Wonder Woman’. Expectations were actually pretty low for this installment, but Patty Jenkins’ period action film went on to become the highest-grossing film of the summer of 2017.
Hopefully, ‘Justice League’ will build on that momentum and not be a step back. Of course, Wonder Woman and Batman will be the main characters as they induct newer heroes Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash.
‘Aquaman’ is currently filming for a winter 2018 release but there is still some question as to whether Cyborg will get his own movie.
On the other hand, in 2014, ‘The Flash’ was announced as getting a solo movie written and directed by Seth Grahame-Smith, due in 2018.
But after Grahame-Smith and his successor Rick Famuyiwa both walked off the project, the fate of ‘The Flash’ was up in the air. Famuyiwa departed in October of 2016 and there has been nothing but silence regarding the project since, causing fans to wonder if the film would ever happen.
But WB appears to be moving forward even without a director, but the film has been renamed ‘Flashpoint’ a title that should be familiar to both fans of the comics and ‘The Flash’ TV show. There had been talks that Cyborg would appear in the film in an effort to boost his profile for a solo movie, but now it seems that WB is hoping to boost ‘Flashpoint’ itself by including their biggest success so far… Wonder Woman.
‘Wonder Woman II’ meanwhile has already been announced for release in 2019.
The ‘Flashpoint’ comic book included dozens of characters, but don’t expect a DC version of ‘Captain America: Civil War’. However, it is said to include other DC heroes with Wonder Woman among them. That means that Cyborg hasn’t necessarily been bumped. In the comic, the story dealt with the damage done to the entire world during a war between Atlantis and Themyscira. The means Aquaman may also play a pretty hefty role. Both the comic and TV show versions dealt with time travel and its repercussions. At this point, there’s no telling if the film version will as well or if they are just using a familiar name.
What do you think? Is WB spreading Wonder Woman too thin? Or are they just hoping their (so far) most bankable star (a la Marvel’s Iron Man) can drum up excitement for their less tested properties?
Source: Forbes via Screen Rant
