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James Gunn, Peter Safran to Lead DC Studios for Warner Bros. Discovery -- Variety

James Gunn and Peter Safran have been tapped as co-chairmen and co-CEOs of DC Studios, a newly created production entity that will oversee DC properties for Warner Bros. Discovery.

Gunn and Safran will now oversee film, TV, and animation at DC Studios. They will assume their new roles on Nov. 1. They will report to Warner Bros. Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav and will work closely with Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, co-chairpersons and CEOs of Warner Bros. Film Group. Both are also expected to continue to work on other projects outside of DC.

https://collider.com/warner-bros-discovery-2-billion-tax-write-off/

Related. WB is apparently set to write off around 2 billion (with a B) of projects by end of Q3. This is in addition to Batgirl.

I would guess this is probably in relation to the new leadership and whatever their plan is for moving forward.

Maybe Flash is going in the bin anyway. Good.

Awesome.

Gunn did great with Peacemaker. More along those lines please!

To be honest, I'm not seeing the loss.

The DC movie stable basically consists of one surprisingly good Shazam! movie, a stellar Suicide Squad reboot, Batman being Batman, and everything else is kind of like watching a slow-moving trainwreck. Flash at this point is going to be more famous for how many scandals Ezra Miller can entangle himself in between pre-production and release.

It's no wonder the business is in cost-cutting mode. They've been throwing literal gak at the wall for nearly a decade with no clear idea what anything they're doing is or what their IPs are worth. Even the animated offerings, which were a high point for a long time, have started becoming tedious and dull.

Chuckleheads can't even produce a solid Green Lantern, Aquaman, or Martian Manhunter film and they want to make a full-blown Wonder Twins movie. A movie about the disaster than the franchise has been since Man of Steel would honestly be insanely entertaining. Just record the meetings where significant decisions were made in this franchise that gak will be funnier than Pitch Meeting. And DC is just a microcosm of WB's and the film industry's broader problems.

I’d argue the Aquaman movie was successful, in that it was a crowd pleaser that made a billion dollars. It was fun, too.

Aquaman, Wonder Woman (just the first one), Shazam, and The Batman (the most recent one) have been the only good DC offerings.

The trailer for the new Shazam looks awful.

 Lance845 wrote:
Aquaman, Wonder Woman (just the first one), Shazam, and The Batman (the most recent one) have been the only good DC offerings.

You forgot to include the most recent Suicide Squad on that list.

For me it’s Shazam, The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker.

Wonder Woman suffered from Gadot’s usual wooden acting and Crapbaddyitis. Aquaman just….wasn’t that great. If it wasn’t for Jason Momoa’s charisma, who knows.

A surprising pick, but a very strong duo in the form of a big creative talent, and a producer with a very long resume with WB.

As long as they are given time to find their footing and come up with a plan that isn't reactionary lurching from one bandwagon to the next, they should be able to get it right.

 Lance845 wrote:
Maybe Flash is going in the bin anyway. Good.

Why would they do that? And why would it be "good"?

 LordofHats wrote:
... they want to make a full-blown Wonder Twins movie.

Zaslav cancelled that.

Because the lead actor is a trainwreck dealing with serious mental illness and is currently on trial for burglary and has claimed to be Jesus, the devil, and the next messiah.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Miller

ccs wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Aquaman, Wonder Woman (just the first one), Shazam, and The Batman (the most recent one) have been the only good DC offerings.

You forgot to include the most recent Suicide Squad on that list.

You're right. The second Suicide Squad was good. The first was trash.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Maybe Flash is going in the bin anyway. Good.

Why would they do that? And why would it be "good"?

Because if you have been paying any attention to it's development over the last... 8 years?... it's been a complete train wreck. And they would do that because the new leadership would want a clean slate. Shazam is coming out in a few months. Flash hasn't had a trailer yet because they keep needing to do reshoots to reduce the role of the lead actor because he is an insane person who keep breaking into peoples houses and threatening them while going everywhere in a bullet proof vest and starting cults.

For sure they have had meetings at DC about how they could recut the movie to turn it into a Batman movie staring Keaton.

They're not doing reshoots to reduce his role. Where are you getting that from? He came back to do reshoots because he's the lead.

And the scuttlebutt is that the movie is really good. The actor is a trainwreck, not the film.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Because the lead actor is a trainwreck dealing with serious mental illness and is currently on trial for burglary and has claimed to be Jesus, the devil, and the next messiah.

And thus the entire movie should be scrapped?

This is a good thing. Honestly I'm in agreement. The only things I've enjoyed from DC have been the newest Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, Shazam, and Aquaman. I fell asleep to the new Batman but that may have just been because I tried to watch it at 11 at night after a particularly trying day with small people

The new Batman was really excellent, but kind of squandered a perfect Arkham style takedown sequence at the end for a rather bizarre brute force ending. I need to rewatch it as I'm not sure how well it holds up when you know how the mystery plays out, but it was super satisfying to see a Batman film that really feels like something out of Detective comics. For comic fans, it also helps to know in advance that the villain is more Hush than the Riddler most people are used to.

I've felt a disturbance in the force, as if dozens of 80's hair metal band's cried out in joy.

James Gunn loves him some hair metal.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And thus the entire movie should be scrapped?

Yeah, as if he's the only person in Hollywood with a shedload of personal problems. It's basically Grand Central Station for that.

FWIW, the buzz is that the film is actually pretty darn good. This idea that they're going to gak-can a $200 mil film that's testing great is ridiculous. Ezra Miller's issues aren't on the radar of the vast majority of people in the world anyway.

As I've said before, they'll handle this by having Miller (publicly) seek therapy, and then damn near put him under house arrest until the movie's released. When it's time for the press tour, he'll probably be absent citing "prior commitments to another project" or some such. Basically they'll deprive the story of oxygen until the movie's out and they can announce his replacement. George Mackay is the name that's rumored a lot.

There have been many rumblings about what exactly the Flash movie is. Rewrites, reshoots, and changing roles. Not just because Ezra sucks, but because DC has changed leadership 3 times since it began production.

They want to make the movie Flash Point and use it as a jumping off point to change direction for what the DCEU is going to be moving forward. But they haven't actually figured out WHAT that end result is and they keep changing their minds on it with the different leadership. Now, here comes Gunn and Safran to do a new plan moving forward and here is this movie... that maybe needs to change again... to establish a new clean slate for the DCEU.

Ezra definitely plays a part in their decisions. But he's not the only part. This Flash movie is supposed to lay some ground work going forward. They just haven't been organized enough to establish what that ground work means.

It's been a troubled project no doubt.

But from what I've read about the plot, the 'reset' component really only concerns a few minutes at the end of the movie. The rest of the film stands on its own and shouldn't require any tinkering.

So for instance...


From what I've read, that's about the level of detail we're looking at in terms of 'ground work'. It's not something woven throughout the film that will require them to chop it up to accommodate. Seems like the reset will be more about the execution of other films going forward than some big exposition sequence in the Flash film.

Yeah, except the Ezra stuff happened. So now they were looking to remove Ezra from that equation too. It isn't Ezra that makes it to the finale. It's some other Flash. Which Flash? And since it's no longer going to be Ezra, you need to establish this other Flash earlier in the film. Here comes like... 3 different Flashes in the film which requires some pretty extensive rewrites. (Think the latest Spiderman, except Tom Holland is a lunatic who is going to get fired. So they need to figure out which other Spiderman is going to stay in the MCU to move forward).

My understanding of the original script was this was Flash Point pretty on the nose of the comic version. Ezra goes in. Ezra comes out.

At some point Ezra's shenanigans changed that plan.

 Lance845 wrote:
Yeah, except the Ezra stuff happened. So now they were looking to remove Ezra from that equation too. It isn't Ezra that makes it to the finale. It's some other Flash. Which Flash? And since it's no longer going to be Ezra, you need to establish this other Flash earlier in the film. Here comes like... 3 different Flashes in the film which requires some pretty extensive rewrites. (Think the latest Spiderman, except Tom Holland is a lunatic who is going to get fired. So they need to figure out which other Spiderman is going to stay in the MCU to move forward).

My understanding of the original script was this was Flash Point pretty on the nose of the comic version. Ezra goes in. Ezra comes out.

At some point Ezra's shenanigans changed that plan.

Where are you getting this information? I haven't read or heard anything about them rewriting and reshooting the whole film to introduce another actor for Barry Allen. What makes the most sense and what I've read is that it's Ezra in, Ezra out...and then Ezra done for good. They'll just introduce the new actor in the next Flash appearance...which is probably years away anyway. This idea that Ezra is so toxic that they'd cancel a $200 mil movie or spend tens of millions more to Tig Notara the star of the film based on his actions to this date is just silly outside of maybe someplace like Twitter. If he murders people between now and next June, all bets are off. If he stays out of trouble they'll just get through this film (which again is supposedly testing very well) and then wash their hands of him.

They can have Ezra in every scene in the film, and then recast him for the next Flash.

Very few actors aren't replaceable.

Pretty soon I'd bet most of them will be replaceable. Or more replaceable, at least. Voice and motion capture actors are all cheaper and eventually movies will 'make' a character's face with CGI. Big franchises will be more secure when they don't have to worry about the 'faces' of the product saying embarrassing things on Twitter or dying unexpectedly. A voice and a motion capture actor is much more replaceable. In the grand scheme of the business, market pressure and money interest will reduce the role of actors as we've known them.

I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, and I think that the actor unions would get in the way of that.

 LordofHats wrote:
Pretty soon I'd bet most of them will be replaceable. Or more replaceable, at least. Voice and motion capture actors are all cheaper and eventually movies will 'make' a character's face with CGI. Big franchises will be more secure when they don't have to worry about the 'faces' of the product saying embarrassing things on Twitter or dying unexpectedly. A voice and a motion capture actor is much more replaceable. In the grand scheme of the business, market pressure and money interest will reduce the role of actors as we've known them.

What you're describing was first done 13 years ago in the movie Avatar. The second movie to do that will be released in just over 50 days...

 Ghaz wrote:
The second movie to do that will be released in just over 50 days...

Fair.

I was actually thinking of Leia and Tarkin and Disney pushing the tech to preserve actor's faces that could eventually become the basis for completely CGI faces to become the faces of films but yeah Avatar is a thing.

 gorgon wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Yeah, except the Ezra stuff happened. So now they were looking to remove Ezra from that equation too. It isn't Ezra that makes it to the finale. It's some other Flash. Which Flash? And since it's no longer going to be Ezra, you need to establish this other Flash earlier in the film. Here comes like... 3 different Flashes in the film which requires some pretty extensive rewrites. (Think the latest Spiderman, except Tom Holland is a lunatic who is going to get fired. So they need to figure out which other Spiderman is going to stay in the MCU to move forward).

My understanding of the original script was this was Flash Point pretty on the nose of the comic version. Ezra goes in. Ezra comes out.

At some point Ezra's shenanigans changed that plan.

Where are you getting this information? I haven't read or heard anything about them rewriting and reshooting the whole film to introduce another actor for Barry Allen. What makes the most sense and what I've read is that it's Ezra in, Ezra out...and then Ezra done for good. They'll just introduce the new actor in the next Flash appearance...which is probably years away anyway. This idea that Ezra is so toxic that they'd cancel a $200 mil movie or spend tens of millions more to Tig Notara the star of the film based on his actions to this date is just silly outside of maybe someplace like Twitter. If he murders people between now and next June, all bets are off. If he stays out of trouble they'll just get through this film (which again is supposedly testing very well) and then wash their hands of him.

That is at least 3 flashes in this movie.

You are talking about them burning a 200 million dollar movie. But again, they are planning on writing off 2 BILLION worth of projects. 200 Mil is just a part of the way towards their write off plan.

There are two in that trailer, both played by the same actor. The other costume with all the glowy bits is probably just the post-Flashpoint suit. Not sure how this changes anything you've said.

And again, why would they burn this film? It's tested very well, and they've spent a long time and a lot of money on it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
There are two in that trailer, both played by the same actor. The other costume with all the glowy bits is probably just the post-Flashpoint suit. Not sure how this changes anything you've said.

And again, why would they burn this film? It's tested very well, and they've spent a long time and a lot of money on it.

Because you can just write it off on taxes, and it gives you a completely clean slate to build a flash movie, from the ground up and completely divorced from everything it is currently linked to, that is in line with the current vision of the DCEU.

You don't write movies off if you think they'll make you a lot of money/be successful.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You don't write movies off if you think they'll make you a lot of money/be successful.

You're assuming they think that.

You know what other film tested really well with audiences before release? Mortal Kombat Annihilation.