DC Studios Can’t Build If It’s Always Rebooting

With news that James Gunn and Peter Safran are out at DC Studios and Skydance pulling in Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham to oversee the slate going forward, rumors are swirling that we’re in for another reboot. For its part, it feels like insiders at Skydance are trying to tear down everything Gunn and Safran built, with this obvious hatchet job landing in the pages of Variety. Puck’s Matt Belloni claims that the studio is going “into reboot mode…again.” No one is safe, not even new Superman David Corenswet with word circling that the upcoming Superman: Man of Tomorrow is going to be a huge loser at the box office (a strange assertion given the same cast, director, and quick turnaround on the movie). But these whisperings in the press are to pave the way. Skydance wants to frame what Gunn and Safran attempted as costly and unpopular, and whatever Latcham does will be great because it’s part of the shiny new studio.

I’m not going to excuse every decision Gunn and Safran made (Supergirl should have been better, and I don’t think Craig Gillespie was the right filmmaker for it), but they did what they could with the tools at their disposal. They couldn’t launch a new Batman when The Batman arrived in theaters only a couple of months prior to their arrival. They couldn’t launch a new Flash when The Flash flopped only a couple months after their arrival. They went with the biggest name they had, Superman, and turned it into a reasonable hit at a time when interest in superhero movies was waning. Beyond that, the best-case scenario was what? Two more Batman movies in the span of four years?

To tear it all down is the kind of clumsy business decision I would expect from someone who is already demanding a new Justice League but doesn’t understand the landscape of superhero movies or what fans are looking for. The biggest issue right now is that audiences got tired of the glut of superhero movies. There’s no other way to look at the billion-dollar grosses of movies like Captain Marvel and Aquaman and then see their sequels only return a fraction of that at the box office. The whole point of a sequel is that it’s supposed to perform roughly on par with the original. Marvel has struggled to get people interested in their ongoing projects and has even admitted to trying to do too much. What exactly is Latcham supposed to do differently that Gunn and Safran weren’t already doing? 

I’ve heard Latcham is a nice, professional guy, but I doubt he has some secret sauce to make audiences fall in love with every superhero they see. Moreover, should he engage in a teardown project, there are real risks of losing those fans you’ve gained. While it’s certainly possible for an unpopular take on a character to be revitalized, as we saw with The Amazing Spider-Man ending in favor of moving Spidey into the MCU with Tom Holland taking the role, that would require a level of unpopularity Superman and The Batman haven’t met. If you say that Man of Tomorrow and The Batman: Part II are the last time you see these iterations, you now have to reignite interest rather than look at what’s working. You’ve also burned the people who liked seeing Corenswet as Superman and Robert Pattinson as Batman (I am among these people).

I’m not saying that Latcham is required to take everything Gunn and Safran did and carry it forward. I don’t think you’re going to get a great return on a second season of The Penguin, for example. But the idea that rebooting everything is done without cost is to miss that you’re running against waning interest in your entire project. The average person does not want to have to keep up with which version of Superman or Batman you’re on. I’m a sicko, so I’ll see anything but try explaining to a casual moviegoer why they have to learn another Superman world and all that entails. Even Spider-Man arguably needed the leg-up of being re-introduced via Captain America: Civil War before getting another solo movie.

If both Man of Tomorrow and The Batman: Part II are massive bombs at the box office, it would at least be reasonable to discuss a new direction. But signaling a change before anyone has even seen those movies is to shrug off not only a creative direction, but the interest you’ve already built. You can get dollar signs in your eyes and argue that Superman and Batman movies should cross $1 billion, but Spider-Man: Homecoming made $880 million. Spider-Man: Brand New Day grossed $2.5 billion worldwide in part because people felt attached to this character rather than starting over every couple of attempts. 

Skydance is free to wipe the slate clean after Gunn and Safran’s projects have debuted, but it would be foolhardy to assume audiences will come back for any superhero iteration. As comics fans will tell you, part of the reason they became fans was to see the ongoing adventures of these characters, and constant reboots like New 52 and Rebirth wear away at your investment. I appreciate that Latcham wants to build his vision at DC Studios, but hopefully he won’t ignore where he already has a strong foundation.