DC Comics on Film

[Mr Sausage]

I am legitimately shocked this is actually going to see the light of day. Wow!

The movie industry has changed in ways we can't even imagine.

This seems absolutely unprecedented to me.

Not really. Warners did it once before with the Richard Donner cut of Superman II

[Nasir007]

I mean the Extended 'R' rated cut of Batman v Superman was still a terrible film - adding more footage is not going to improve matters. But then again, the lengths to which fans have gone to campaign for this new cut of Justice League are so bizarre, clearly Warner Bros think they can get some money back from this project...

I am amazed this makes business sense. Which is what I was getting at with the film industry transforming into a streaming model.

This would never ever ever ever happen with a theatrical model.

A film - hated by critics, hated by fans, bombs and loses money. But a small toxic fanbase asks for the original version of the movie and they are actually going to get it and the studio is going to spend an additional 30 million dollars on a failed movie just for a streaming re-release!

If the new version turns out terrible - they get horrible publicity for making such a stupid call and sinking so much money into something that was worse. If it is better, they get bad publicity for pulling it in the first place. I just wonder what the upside could possibly be.

But clearly, there is something they are seeing in it. Probably the notoriety of it is enough to drive subscriptions for HBO Max.

[Never Cursed]

The “Snyder Cut” of Justice League will debut on HBO Max in 2021, after a lengthy period of additional postproduction said to cost anywhere between 20 to 30 million dollars. The film will reportedly run around four hours long.

This has been memed into oblivion at this point, so much so that I have no idea why there has been such overwhelming demand for it. What are people expecting from this, exactly?

After the film's troubled production came to light (and Snyder effectively cast himself/was cast by angry fans as a classic misunderstood artist screwed by the execs), the movie became a fetish object just like any other unavailable film or cut of a film. Given earlier clamors for much smaller re-edits like the Final Cut of Blade Runner, it makes all too much sense to me why a crowd of misguided superfans would expect this to be a lost masterpiece. The thing that impresses me the most was that Warners agreed to let this happen at all. I don't see how releasing this doesn't put them in an entirely unavoidable catch-22 situation - to paraphrase from someone else, either the Snyder cut is terrible, fans are outraged, and Warners looks like suckers for allowing it to happen, or the Snyder cut is significantly better than the theatrical cut of Justice League, fans are outraged, and Warners looks like the monsters that ruined a good movie.

[tenia]

I hope to be wrong but I guess it'll only be vaguely less crappy than the cut that made it in the theaters, but we'll have the demonstration by the example and will FINALLY able to settle that and move on.

I especially hope it won't last 4 hours. I can't imagine 4 hours of this kind of movie.

As Never Cursed is pointing out, I don't understand either Warner's point in doing this. It's a lose-lose situation for them : either it still sucks but will have cost additionnal money to release another version of a shitty movie for no reason that pleasing some obsessive fans, or it doesn't and will only prove they're extremely poor project managers even when it cost that much.
Maybe they just don't care and simply hope to cash in.

[captveg]

I am amazed this makes business sense.

Gotta look at it from AT&T's perspective. They didn't pay for Justice League's production. To them it was simply another movie in the library of their purchase of Time Warner.

So now they have the HBO Max launch, which they are investing $100 millions + into. A-level streaming series like The Crown and The Mandalorian cost $10m+ an episode to produce. So, for the price of 2-3 episodes of an A-level streaming show (the reported $20-30m to bring Snyder's JL across the finish line), they get to release a $300m+ produced film that already has a built in audience that has been literally begging to see it, plus all the free advertisement that has created. Pretty obvious greenlight from AT&T if there ever was one, strictly from a business move.

Speaking personally I love Man of Steel and really like the Ultimate Cut of Batman v Superman, so I'm definitely glad Snyder's version of Justice League will be getting a belated release. Everything I've read about it's story outline is an improvement over what the studio released in 2017. At the very least restoring Junkie XL's original score and having Fabien Wagner's photography properly color timed as intended when shot should be aesthetically more pleasing, which is something I think even the most vocal of detractors to Snyder's films would agree is a positive thing.

Having it on streaming will help those not interested in it to sidestep it as well, so win-win there, IMO. Aside from the occasional outlier (Stranger Things, The Mandalorion, Roma, The Irishman, and so on), streaming shows/movies rarely catch the zeitgeist of theatrical films given big tentpole marketing. It's even less common for streaming content to hit the negative zeitgeist the way a big tentpole theatrical failure can. Snyder's historically divisive filmography is probably best suited for streaming media, where those that enjoy it can seek it out, and those who don't care for his work have plenty of other content that appeals to them just a click away. It's the most democratic venue of consumerism there is nowadays, even if it's much harder for any one program to capture the wide attention of the traditional theatrical release.

As for how this is a catch-22 for WB - I don't see it. For a couple years now they have been pretty clearly fine with just having DC films / TV shows do their own thing, and it's mostly working for them. They've stopped chasing the MCU in this way. They can have Joker and Aquaman and a TV version of The Flash all out there for the public to consume and trust the majority of the audience to get that they aren't connected, and that they don't need to be connected to like them (or not) each on their own merits.

[Nasir007]

I am amazed this makes business sense.

Gotta look at it from AT&T's perspective. They didn't pay for Justice League's production. To them it was simply another movie in the library of their purchase of Time Warner.

So now they have the HBO Max launch, which they are investing $100 millions + into. A-level streaming series like The Crown and The Mandalorian cost $10m+ an episode to produce. So, for the price of 2-3 episodes of an A-level streaming show (the reported $20-30m to bring Snyder's JL across the finish line), they get to release a $300m+ produced film that already has a built in audience that has been literally begging to see it, plus all the free advertisement that has created.

This is a grotesque exaggeration right? The movie failed. Nobody was clamoring for it. The Snyder Cut troll community was a niche movement, barely this side of Qanon if you ask me.

This isn't Mad Max we are talking about. This is an awful unwatchable movie that on the evidence of Snyder's previous Director's cut, might be worse.

And even if the 300mil+ wasn't an upfront cost, you could definitely portion out a cost they paid for it in the acquisition.

Not denying that there was some business logic to it. If there hadn't been, we wouldn't be here. But I think it has to be more than a built-in audience.

I think more than anything, it kinda shows that streaming content is so fungible. There is no penalty for being bad or awful. There is little sense of merit or distinction to go around. If people have to fill an evening or a meal or a workout or bus ride, literally anything will do.

[jazzo]

Excellent news, not for what is sure to be a larger turd than the original cut of Justice League, but because there is now hope that our own very niche online community can pressure Warner into releasing Frank Perry's cut of The Last Summer!

So.

Let's do that.

[beamish14]

Excellent news, not for what is sure to be a larger turd than the original cut of Justice League, but because there is now hope that our own very niche online community can pressure Warner into releasing Frank Perry's cut of The Last Summer!

So.

Let's do that.

Guillermo del Toro tried to shame WB into putting out The Devils on Blu-Ray by drumming up publicity on Twitter, but it didn't amount to anything.

[captveg]

I am amazed this makes business sense.

Gotta look at it from AT&T's perspective. They didn't pay for Justice League's production. To them it was simply another movie in the library of their purchase of Time Warner.

So now they have the HBO Max launch, which they are investing $100 millions + into. A-level streaming series like The Crown and The Mandalorian cost $10m+ an episode to produce. So, for the price of 2-3 episodes of an A-level streaming show (the reported $20-30m to bring Snyder's JL across the finish line), they get to release a $300m+ produced film that already has a built in audience that has been literally begging to see it, plus all the free advertisement that has created.

This is a grotesque exaggeration right? The movie failed. Nobody was clamoring for it. The Snyder Cut troll community was a niche movement, barely this side of Qanon if you ask me.

This isn't Mad Max we are talking about. This is an awful unwatchable movie that on the evidence of Snyder's previous Director's cut, might be worse.

And even if the 300mil+ wasn't an upfront cost, you could definitely portion out a cost they paid for it in the acquisition.

Not denying that there was some business logic to it. If there hadn't been, we wouldn't be here. But I think it has to be more than a built-in audience.

I think more than anything, it kinda shows that streaming content is so fungible. There is no penalty for being bad or awful. There is little sense of merit or distinction to go around. If people have to fill an evening or a meal or a workout or bus ride, literally anything will do.

The movie sure did fail, but AT&T had nothing to do with that, in their view. Especially since it's not just a longer cut like BvS was. That was still the same movie - a better, more appropriately paced version of that movie, IMO, but still the same movie, with both cuts delivered by Snyder for different market purposes. JL is a different thing - a Frankenstein of a film that has the most basic skeleton of Snyder's film, but with massive alternate takes and added content to it he had nothing to do with, while also excising a lot of story that Snyder had intended to be there. It's like if the Love Conquers All Brazil was widdled down even further to 30 minutes, then had another film's shoot add 60 more minutes of new content as well to bring it to the 90 minute runtime. Plus color timed wrong; plus a new score commissioned. (Not a comparison of the quality of Brazil with any of Snyder's films; as much as I love MoS it's not even in Brazil's ballpark, so let's not take it down that road).

I'm not expecting it to be Mad Max. I'm expecting it to be a JL film I can watch alongside MoS and BvS and enjoy, matching those films stylistically and thematically (the theatrical cut of JL goes out of its way to ignore those films aside from the most basic plot threads, pleasing neither those who like those films, nor appealing to those who wanted to completely disregard those films). I don't think that's much too much to ask if AT&T is willing to foot the bill as they are doing here. It doesn't have to be one of the greatest film of the decade or anything for me to want to see it and possibly enjoy it.

I don't think JL factored much into AT&T spending $85b for Time Warner. The DC IP in general, absolutely. One failed movie? Just another item on the list of assets, even if it was a high profile failure.

Part of my point about the streaming content was indeed that if it is either niche and/or bad it doesn't draw much attention in the end (certainly not to the level of a theatrical tentpole failure) and mostly disappears into the vast crowd of content. As you said -"fungible". It likely won't remain in that state forever as the competition for viewers escalates, but it's there at this time. No one bats much of an eye at the shows that don't get larger acceptance and/or get poor reviews. Netflix has dozens of such content, from Sense8 to The Get Down.

[captveg]

Excellent news, not for what is sure to be a larger turd than the original cut of Justice League, but because there is now hope that our own very niche online community can pressure Warner into releasing Frank Perry's cut of The Last Summer!

So.

Let's do that.

Guillermo del Toro tried to shame WB into putting out The Devils on Blu-Ray by drumming up publicity on Twitter, but it didn't amount to anything.

Sadly, it doesn't have the DC branding to appeal to the general populous, and it has been unseen by so many for so long that the traction for this effort went by the wayside. I'd give up every single one of Snyders DC films for a Criterion Blu-ray of The Devils if that would somehow magically make it come to fruition. This world doesn't grasp truly culturally valuable priorities!

[Professor Wagstaff]

'Justice League' Star Ray Fisher Accuses Joss Whedon of "Abusive, Unprofessional" Behavior on Set

[flyonthewall2983]

First teaser for The Batman

[therewillbeblus]

First teaser for The Batman

This actually looks.. quite good. Seems to be going for the gritty Nolan realism but perhaps more brutal. Excited to see Farrell's Penguin, though I assume those scenes haven't been shot yet- either way saving the surprise is welcome.

[Big Ben]

Man people are hyped for The Batman. After all the dour mood about Snyder's stuff it's nice to see people excited for Batman again.

[Never Cursed]

In less appetizing news, the first official teaser for the Snyder Cut was also released today (in 1.66:1?), along with the info that the roughly 214-minute long film will be split into 4 1-hour episodes and released as a miniseries.

[EddieLarkin]

The trailer definitely isn't as wide as 1.66:1. I understand Snyder has ditched that ratio for the film and is instead using the full height of the 4-perf Super35 framing, to imitate the 1.44:1 IMAX ratio, despite the film not using IMAX cameras for any scenes.

In other words, he's releasing it open matte.

[smccolgan]

First teaser for The Batman

This actually looks.. quite good. Seems to be going for the gritty Nolan realism but perhaps more brutal. Excited to see Farrell's Penguin, though I assume those scenes haven't been shot yet- either way saving the surprise is welcome.

Farrell’s in the trailer, under either prosthetics or makeup, and it was hard to recognize him.

[therewillbeblus]

Well I'll be.. unrecognizable is an understatement

[captveg]

I appreciate the Se7en vibe Reeves is going for with The Batman. The film looks great.

ZSJL is great to see being itself again. It's nice to have the film back to what it was intended to be, aside from the necessity to release it in four parts. A necessary compromise to get this version of the film finished, but at least the non-segmented full film version will be available to view afterwards.

WW84 still looks quite good. The delays have taken a bit of the wind out of its sails as it has all the delayed films, but the vibrancy of it still shines through.

Gunn's The Suicide Squad looks bonkers in the best way. Just an all-out chaotic madhouse with mostly z-grade characters, but not in the Birds of Prey way. Maybe he'll be the first one to take this corner of the DC Films IP and make a film I enjoy.

Promising news all around for The Flash, Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Chances are not all of these films will be great (or even good), but as of this moment they all have my interest.

[domino harvey]

Everyone, we still need to split off some of the discussions here into dedicated threads, so please refrain from talking about more than one of these films in each post you make so that we can move them (eventually)

[captveg]

Sorry about that. I thought it would be more efficient to sum up my response to the DC Fandome movie news in one post, but guess it had the opposite effect in that context!

[domino harvey]

No worries, if anything it was a good catalyst to remind me that we needed to say something about it for everyone!

[Nasir007]

I guess I will just put this here for the new Batman film. I don't know what I am missing but it seems there was a volcano of jizz on the internet in reaction to the Batman trailer and I am just thinking what did I miss.

This is literally the 6th Batman movie in 16 years, what are others seeing that I am not.

I find the character just in general to be extremely uninteresting and I love Pattinson as an actor so I will see it for him but I cannot wrap my head around the reaction it received.

Maybe it will make sense to me once the movie comes out.

[domino harvey]

Take a guess which part of your post I don’t ever want to read again

[Brian C]

It would be considerably more difficult to find a part of that post that you do want to read again.