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    Superman Is Driving DC Studios’ New Strategy

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    The yet-to-be-cast “Superman: Legacy” will begin a story that unfolds across at least 10 interconnected movies and TV shows, with Batman, Swamp Thing and others.Superman is returning to theaters — only now, along with saving the world, he has to prove that Warner Bros. has finally, without question, it means it this time, found a winning superhero strategy.DC Studios, a newly formed Warner division dedicated to superhero content, unveiled plans on Tuesday to reboot Superman onscreen for the first time in a generation, tentatively scheduling the yet-to-be-cast “Superman: Legacy” for release in theaters in July 2025. James Gunn, known for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” is writing the screenplay and may also direct the movie, which will focus on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing.“He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old-fashioned,” said Peter Safran, chief executive of DC Studios, a title he shares with Mr. Gunn.Moreover, “Superman: Legacy” will begin a story that will unfold (Marvel style) across at least 10 interconnected movies and TV shows and include new versions of Batman, Robin, Supergirl, Swamp Thing and Green Lantern. Those marquee DC Comics characters will be joined by lesser-known personalities from the DC library, including Creature Commandos and Booster Gold, a time traveler. One of the shows will explore Themyscira, the mythical island home of Wonder Woman.The 10 projects will roll out over four to five years — at which time a second batch of related films and shows will be announced, expanding the “Superman: Legacy” saga to nearly a decade and perhaps helping David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, to keep a promise to Wall Street about growth.“Part of our strategy is drive the hell out of DC,” Mr. Zaslav said at an RBC Capital Markets event in November. Discovery took over Warner Bros. last year as part of a $43 billion merger.If it all comes to fruition, the “Superman: Legacy” universe of projects will add to a roster of unrelated superhero movies left over from a previous Warner Bros. administration. These movies, sequels all, include “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “The Batman — Part II.”Warner Bros. bought DC Comics in 1969, and has since used DC characters to make more than 40 movies and at least 30 television shows, including cartoons. But the DC library has been widely viewed on Wall Street as underexploited because a competing comics-to-screens company, the Disney-owned Marvel, has provided an example of what is possible.Over the last 10 years, Marvel has been a blockbuster machine, delivering slates of interconnected superhero movies that have collected $23 billion at the global box office. Movies based on DC characters and released by Warner Bros. have generated about $9 billion over that period.Suffice it to say, Warner Bros., which invented the big-budget superhero movie in 1978 with “Superman,” has been under pressure to get its act together. In a restructuring in October, Mr. Zaslav ended the studio’s decentralized approach to superhero management — separate film and television divisions developed material independently, sometimes causing friction — and put Mr. Gunn and Mr. Safran in charge of superhero films, series and animated offerings.“The stakes are massive for us, and for Warner Bros. Discovery,” Mr. Safran said.Mr. Gunn called Warner’s old system “pretty messed up.”“Nobody was minding the mint,” he added. “They were just giving away I.P. like they were party favors to any creator who smiled at them.”Superhero movies remain reliably popular at the box office, but a glut of them has prompted worries that studios are wearing out the audience.“I think it’s real,” Mr. Gunn said, referring to superhero fatigue. “You have to make the stories diverse and different. Good guy, bad guy, giant thing in the sky, good guys win — you can’t tell that story again. You need to tell stories that are more, you know, morally complex.” More

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      Richard Donner, Director of ‘Superman’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’ Films, Dies at 91

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      The Bronx-born Mr. Donner was in his late 40s when he made his first megahit, about the Man of Steel, but others soon followed, including “The Goonies” and “Scrooged.”Richard Donner, the tough, single-minded but playful film director who made Christopher Reeve’s Superman fly, Mel Gibson’s deranged detective lethal and the young stars of “The Goonies” pirate-adorable, died on Monday. He was 91. His production company and his wife and producing partner, Lauren Shuler Donner, confirmed the death with Hollywood trade publications. They did not say where he died or give the cause.Mr. Donner was in his late 40s when he made his first blockbuster, “Superman,” reviving a comic-book hero who hadn’t been seen onscreen since the 1950s television series “Adventures of Superman.” The film opened in 1978, introducing Mr. Reeve, a relative unknown at the time, as the Man of Steel and some state-of-the-art special effects.“If the audience didn’t believe he was flying, I didn’t have a movie,” Mr. Donner told Variety in 1997.That megahit was followed by “Inside Moves” (1980), a drama about a man crippled in a failed suicide attempt (Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Donner had directed it “with a surprising gentleness”); “The Toy” (1982), with Richard Pryor, whose character finds himself hired to be the plaything of a spoiled rich child; “The Goonies” (1987), about misfit children on a treasure hunt; the first of four “Lethal Weapon” movies (also 1987), starring Mr. Gibson and Danny Glover; and “Scrooged” (1988), an irreverent comic take on Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” starring Bill Murray.Christopher Reeve in “Superman.” “If the audience didn’t believe he was flying, I didn’t have a movie,” Mr. Donner said.Warner Brothers, via ReutersMr. Donner attributed the surprise success of “Lethal Weapon” to his clean depiction of violence.“I like to turn my head away in suspense, not in disgust,” he said in a 1987 interview with The Times. “Sure, there were a lot of deaths, but they died like they died in westerns. They were shot with bullets; they weren’t dismembered.”He even admitted to having stolen some fight moves from a western: “Red River” (1948), which starred John Wayne.Mr. Donner always said he had been hired for “Goonies” because Steven Spielberg, who produced the movie, had told him, “You’re a bigger kid than I am.” But working with actual kids (including Sean Astin at 14 and Josh Brolin, barely 17) was a mixed blessing. “The annoying thing was the lack of discipline,” Mr. Donner told Yahoo Entertainment in 2015. “And that was also what was great, because it meant that they weren’t professionals. What came out of them was instinct.”In a statement on Monday, Mr. Spielberg said: “Dick had such a powerful command of his movies, and was so gifted across so many genres. Being in his circle was akin to hanging out with your favorite coach, smartest professor, fiercest motivator, most endearing friend, staunchest ally, and — of course — the greatest Goonie of all. He was all kid. All heart. All the time.”A scene from “The Goonies.” Mr. Donner said he had been hired for “Goonies” because Steven Spielberg had told him, “You’re a bigger kid than I am.” Warner Bros.Richard Donald Schwartzberg was born on April 24, 1930, in the Bronx, the younger of two children of Fred and Hattie (Horowitz) Schwartzberg. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked in his father’s furniture business; his mother, a daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, worked as a secretary before having children.Richard became fascinated by film when he and his sister would go to their grandfather’s movie theater in Brooklyn. But he had no specific career ambitions, Mr. Donner said in a 2006 Archive of American Television video interview. He grew up in the Bronx and in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and joined the Navy in his teens.His first real attraction to show business came with a summer job parking cars and doing errands at a summer theater. Because his father wanted him to study business, he enrolled in night school at New York University but dropped out after two years.He had some luck landing acting jobs in commercials and finally won a tiny part on the 1950-51 anthology series “Somerset Maugham TV Theater.” The episode’s director, Martin Ritt (who went on to a successful career directing movies like “Hud,” “Sounder” and “Norma Rae”), didn’t care for the young man’s attitude and offered a suggestion. “You can’t take direction,” he said. “You should be a director.”Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in “Lethal Weapon 2.” Mr. Donner attributed the surprise success of the first “Lethal Weapon” to his clean depiction of violence.Warner Bros, via Everett CollectionMr. Donner (he took his stage name from the infamous Donner Pass massacre, observing its centennial at the time, and because Donner sounded like his middle name) continued to do commercials and helped found a commercial production company, which he and his partner later sold to Filmways. He got his big chance to direct prime-time series TV in 1960, with an episode of the western “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” starring Steve McQueen.From the start he brushed elbows with stars. The golden-age-of-Hollywood star Claudette Colbert was in one of his first assignments, a 1960 episode of “Zane Grey Theater.” One of the six “Twilight Zone” episodes he directed was “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” in which William Shatner played a terrified airline passenger who sees a gremlin on the wing outside his window. Neither of Mr. Donner’s first two tries at film made a big splash, but he directed big names: Charles Bronson in “X-15,” a 1961 drama about a test pilot, and Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford in “Salt and Pepper,” a 1968 comedy crime thriller.The first Richard Donner movie that received headline attention was “The Omen” (1976), about a cold-eyed little boy who is secretly the Antichrist. Vincent Canby, unimpressed, described Mr. Donner in The Times as “a television director who has a superb way of dismissing any small detail that might give some semblance of conviction to the proceedings.” But “The Omen” became the year’s fifth-highest-grossing film; soon its director was offered “Superman,” which did even better financially. It was beaten at the box office in 1978 only by “Grease.”Mr. Donner directed Mr. Gibson in two high-profile films in the 1990s: “Maverick” (1994), a comic western with Jodie Foster; and “Conspiracy Theory” (1997), an action thriller about a paranoid cabdriver, with Julia Roberts. In the early ’90s he produced and directed episodes of HBO’s “Tales From the Crypt.”The last “Lethal Weapon” movie was in 1998. Mr. Donner’s last film, “16 Blocks,” was a 2006 crime drama starring Bruce Willis.Mr. Donner in 2017, when he was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe met Ms. Shuler when she hired him for the 1985 fantasy “Ladyhawke”; they married in 1986. The couple eventually chose not to work together because it affected their relationship, Mr. Donner said. “I’m a 200-pound gorilla,” he explained. “She’s a 300-pound gorilla.”But their production company, the Donners’ Company, founded in 1993, has been behind lucrative hits like “Deadpool,” “The Wolverine” and the “X-Men” franchise. (Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.)Like Alfred Hitchcock, Mr. Donner enjoyed making silent cameo appearances in his own projects; he was, among other things, a riverboat card dealer in “Maverick,” a police officer in “The Goonies” and a passer-by in “Superman.”But asked in the Archive of American Television interview how he wanted to be remembered, he was unassuming. “As a good guy who lived a long life and had a good time and always had that lady behind him pushing him,” he said. His only boast: “I’m pretty good at meeting a schedule and a budget.” More

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      A New Writer for Superman

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA New Writer for SupermanPhillip Kennedy Johnson begins his run on Superman this week. First up: a two-part story about the hero, his son and his succession.There should always be a story with a message, said Phillip Kennedy Johnson. “That idea applies more than ever when you’re writing Superman, who embodies the idea of service.”Credit…Matt Roth for The New York TimesMarch 9, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ETWhen the Brian Michael Bendis run on Superman and Action Comics ended (the last issue he wrote came out in December), readers wondered who the next writer would be. Not many would have predicted Phillip Kennedy Johnson would be the one.“Bendis casts a long shadow and is a legend in the industry,” said Johnson, whose previous credits includes limited series and specials. “I think people expected someone of a similar stature to take over.”Fans were able to preview Johnson’s take on Superman in Future State, a two-month storyline that began in January, which explored DC’s heroes decades, and sometimes eons, from now. Susana Polo, the comics editor on the gaming and pop culture website Polygon, wrote, “After reading his Future State Superman books, I’m very excited to see where this lyrical writer with a flare for epic events and asking for epic visuals goes.”It is an exciting time to be a fan of the Man of Steel. The CW series “Superman & Lois” debuted last month and it was announced last week that the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates is working on a Superman screenplay to be produced by J.J. Abrams.Johnson’s first story, set in the present, is a two-parter that will run in Superman and Action Comics this month and is drawn by Phil Hester and Eric Gapstur. It features Jonathan Kent, the teenage son of Lois Lane and Clark Kent, who worries that he is not ready to replace his father.Jonathan Kent, the teenage son of Superman, wonders if he’ll ever be ready to replace his dad in Action Comics No. 1029.Credit…Phil Hester and Eric Gapstur/DCJohnson broke into the industry in 2015 with Last Sons of America, drawn by Matthew Dow Smith, for Boom! Studios, about an attack that hampers reproduction and forces would-be parents to take children from other countries. (Peter Dinklage is set to star in a film version of the series.) Johnson also wrote the horror-fantasy series The Last God for DC and is writing an “Alien” series for Marvel, whose first issue arrives on March 24.He is a sergeant first class in the Army and a member of the Army Field Band. “I’ve learned to devote any skills or talents I have in the service of things that matter,” he said. “There should always be a story or message that’s true, one that deeply matters. That idea applies more than ever when you’re writing Superman, who embodies the idea of service.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Managing Movie Superheroes Is About to Get a Lot More Complicated

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesDC Films, led by Walter Hamada, plans to release movies featuring DC Comics heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman at a much faster pace.  Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexManaging Movie Superheroes Is About to Get a Lot More ComplicatedWalter Hamada, who runs DC Films, is overseeing a dizzying number of projects, part of a swarm of comics-based stories coming from Hollywood.DC Films, led by Walter Hamada, plans to release movies featuring DC Comics heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman at a much faster pace.  Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 27, 2020, 5:05 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — Walter Hamada is not a typical superhero wrangler.He doesn’t have a booming, fanboy-in-chief personality. His modest home office, at least as it appears on Zoom, is light on the usual cape-and-cowl collectibles. Hollywood was not even his first calling: He set out to be a mechanical engineer.As the president of DC Films, however, Mr. Hamada, 52, manages the movie careers of Wonder Woman, Batman, Cyborg, the Flash, Superman and every other DC Comics superhero. And the new course he has charted for them is dizzying.The most expensive DC movies (up to four a year, starting in 2022) are designed for release in theaters, Mr. Hamada said. Additional superhero films (two annually is the goal, perhaps focused on riskier characters like Batgirl and Static Shock) will arrive exclusively on HBO Max, the fledgling streaming service owned by WarnerMedia.In addition, DC Films, which is part of Warner Bros., will work with filmmakers to develop movie offshoots — TV series that will run on HBO Max and interconnect with their big-screen endeavors.“With every movie that we’re looking at now, we are thinking, ‘What’s the potential Max spinoff?’” Mr. Hamada said.If you thought there was a glut of superheroes before, just wait.To make all the story lines work, DC Films will introduce movie audiences to a comics concept known as the multiverse: parallel worlds where different versions of the same character exist simultaneously. Coming up, for instance, Warner Bros. will have two different film sagas involving Batman — played by two different actors — running at the same time.The complicated plan involves a sharp increase in production. Last year, Warner Bros. made two live-action superhero movies, “Joker” and “Shazam!” In 2018, there was only “Aquaman.” All three were smash hits, underscoring the financial opportunity of making more.For various reasons, including creative misfires and management turnover at DC Films (Mr. Hamada took over in 2018), Warner Bros. has badly trailed Disney-owned Marvel at the box office. Over the last decade, Warner Bros. has generated $8 billion in worldwide superhero ticket sales, including $36 million from “Wonder Woman 1984” over the weekend; Marvel has taken in $20.6 billion.Gal Gadot and Chris Pine in “Wonder Woman 1984,” which arrived to $16.7 million in North American ticket sales over the weekend, the best result for any movie since the pandemic started.Credit…Warner BrosSuffice it to say, Warner Bros., which invented the big-budget superhero movie in 1978 with “Superman,” has been under pressure to get its act together.Disney has succeeded in part because its divisions collaborate in a way that siloed Warner Bros. never has. But that is changing. AT&T mandated greater cross-company synergy when it took over WarnerMedia in 2018.“In the past, we were so secretive,” Mr. Hamada said. “It was shocking to me, for example, how few people at the company were actually allowed to read scripts for the movies we are making.”More than ever, studios are leaning on pre-established characters and brands — especially if their corporate parents are building streaming services. HBO Max has 12.6 million subscriber activations. Netflix has 195 million. How do you delight Wall Street and quickly close the gap? You start by putting your superheroes to work.This month, Disney announced 100 new movies and shows for the next few years, most of them headed directly to its Disney+ streaming service, which has 87 million subscribers. Marvel is chipping in 11 films and 11 television shows, including “WandaVision,” which arrives on Jan. 15 and finds Elizabeth Olsen reprising her Scarlet Witch role from the “Avengers” franchise.Warner Bros. has at least as many comics-based movies in various stages of gestation, including a “Suicide Squad” sequel; “The Batman,” in which Robert Pattinson (“Twilight”) plays the Caped Crusader; and “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson as the villainous title character.Television spinoffs from “The Batman” and “The Suicide Squad” are headed to HBO Max. WarnerMedia’s traditional television division has roughly 25 additional live-action and animated superhero shows, including “Superman & Lois,” which arrives on the CW network in February.Robert Pattinson in “The Batman,” which is scheduled for release in theaters in 2022.Credit…Warner Bros. Entertainment, via Associated PressSony Pictures Entertainment has its own superhero slate, with at least two more “Spider-Man” movies in the works; “Morbius,” starring Jared Leto as a pseudo-vampire; and a sequel to “Venom,” which cost $100 million to make in 2018 and collected $856 million worldwide. Sony also has a suite of superhero TV shows headed for Amazon Prime Video.And don’t forget Valiant Entertainment, which is turning comics properties such as “Harbinger,” about superpowered teenagers, into movies with partners like Paramount Pictures.Superheroes have long been Hollywood’s most reliable moneymakers, especially when sales of related merchandise are included. (Wonder Woman tiara for cats, on sale for $59.50.) But how much speeding spandex and computer-generated visual effects can audiences take?More than you think, said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy. “If the stories are well written and the production values are strong,” he said, “then there will be little sign of fatigue.”Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Warner Bros. involves the recent prioritization of HBO Max. “The risk is, will watching these movies first on television degrade the entertainment experience, and later the value,” Mr. Gross said. “For an individual movie, there is no more profitable business model than a successful theatrical release — creating the biggest pop culture event possible. It’s the locomotive that pulls the entire train: merchandise, theme park licensing, other income.”On Friday, Warner Bros. released “Wonder Woman 1984” in North America, where it collected $16.7 million. Citing the coronavirus pandemic (only 39 percent of cinemas in the United States are open), the studio simultaneously distributed the film in theaters and on HBO Max. Warner Bros. will release its entire 2021 slate in the same hybrid fashion.WarnerMedia provided only vague information about the sequel’s performance on HBO Max, saying in a news release that “millions” of subscribers watched it on Friday. Andy Forssell, WarnerMedia’s direct-to-consumer general manager, said the movie “exceeded our expectations across all of our key viewing and subscriber metrics.”So far, “Wonder Woman 1984” has collected $85 million worldwide, with $68.3 million coming from cinemas overseas, where HBO Max does not yet exist. The film, starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins, cost at least $200 million to make and an estimated $100 million to market worldwide. It received much weaker reviews than its series predecessor.Toby Emmerich, president of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said on Sunday that he had “fast-tracked” a third Wonder Woman movie. “Our real life Wonder Women — Gal and Patty — will return to conclude the long-planned theatrical trilogy,” Mr. Emmerich said.Mr. Hamada rose to power through New Line, a Warner Bros. division that mostly makes midbudget horror films and comedies. Among other achievements, he worked with the filmmaker James Wan and others to build “The Conjuring” (2013) into a six-film “world” with $1.8 billion in global ticket sales. (“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” arrives in June.)“A lot of times in studio meetings, executives just repeat buzzwords, and it becomes a joke,” Mr. Wan said. “Walt always brings something constructive, useful and important to the table. He talks to me in a language that I understand.”Mr. Hamada and Jason Momoa, the star of “Aquaman,” which was the lone superhero movie from Warner Bros. in 2018.Credit…Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Hamada arrived at DC Films in 2018, the division was in urgent need of stability.Two terrifyingly expensive movies, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016) and “Justice League” (2017), both directed by Zack Snyder, were deemed almost unwatchable by critics. Ben Affleck, who played Batman in the films, wanted to move on, complicating sequel plans. At the same time, filmmakers were developing other DC movies that had nothing to do with the existing story lines — and, in fact, contradicted some of them.Mr. Hamada and Mr. Emmerich had two options: Figure out how to make the various story lines and character incarnations coexist or start over.The answer is the multiverse. Boiled down, it means that some characters (Wonder Woman as portrayed by Ms. Gadot, for instance) will continue their adventures on Earth 1, while new incarnations (Mr. Pattinson as “The Batman”) will populate Earth 2.“The Flash,” a film set for release in theaters in 2022, will link the two universes and feature two Batmans, with Mr. Affleck returning as one and Michael Keaton returning as the other. Mr. Keaton played Batman in 1989 and 1992.To complicate matters further, HBO Max gave Mr. Snyder more than $70 million to recut his “Justice League” and expand it with new footage. Mr. Snyder and Warner Bros. had clashed over his original vision, which the studio deemed overly grim, resulting in reshoots handled by a different director, Joss Whedon. (That didn’t go well, either.) “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” now four hours long, will arrive in segments on HBO Max in March.At least for now, Mr. Snyder is not part of the new DC Films blueprint, with studio executives describing his HBO Max project as a storytelling cul-de-sac — a street that leads nowhere.The multiverse concept has worked on television, but it is a risky strategy for big screens. These movies need to attract the widest audience possible to justify their cost, and too much of a comic nerd sensibility can be a turnoff. New actors can take over a character; James Bond is the best example. But multiple Gothams spinning in theaters?“I don’t think anyone else has ever attempted this,” Mr. Hamada said. “But audiences are sophisticated enough to understand it. If we make good movies, they will go with it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More