Since AT&T acquired Time Warner and since the launch of HBO Max, there have been indirect and occasionally direct suggestions of a major ramping up of content from the various creative silos within the studio.
Today a new feature piece in The New York Times on Walter Hamada, president of Warners’ DC Films division, confirms that those plans are starting to solidify.
The trade indicates the current plan is to release up to six major DC Comics-inspired movies per year starting 2022. Up to four of these will be designed for release theatrically, and up to two are being designed specifically to premiere on HBO Max exclusively.
The bigger budgets will go towards the theatrical titles, while the two for HBO Max will most likely focus on smaller and potentially riskier properties. This will be a sharp increase in production as DC Films’ total output in recent years has been around two releases annually (2018 had just one).
Additionally, DC Films will work with filmmakers to develop spin-off series that will run on HBO Max and interconnect with the big-screen efforts, the first example being James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” which is getting a tie-in “Peacemaker” TV series.
Hamada, who joined DC Films in 2018, tells the paper: “With every movie that we’re looking at now, we are thinking, ‘What’s the potential Max spinoff?’”
One thing that won’t be happening is any more expansion of the Snyder-verse as the filmmaker is not part of the new blueprint and his recut of “Justice League” is described as “a storytelling cul-de-sac – a street that leads nowhere.”
The DC division is under pressure to get its act together as DC films over the past decade or so have raked in around $8 billion worldwide theatrically, less than half of what rival Marvel Studios has done over the same period.
Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe with its single interconnected universe, DC Films will double down on the multiverse concept with the planned “The Flash” film in 2022 expected to be key. This allows them to have such things as two films involving Batman, played by different actors, released or running simultaneously.
It’s a concept that has worked fine on television, DC having pulled it off successfully with its various shows from the linked Arrow-verse series to standalone works like “Gotham”. Will it work in cinemas? Though indications are hard to say, Marvel is also heading in the multiverse direction with its “Wandavision” series and “Doctor Strange” sequel thought to be the key works opening the doors there.
The full profile piece is up at NYTimes.com.