Yesterday at the Goldman Sach’s Communacopia investor conference, Time Warner Chief Jeff Bewkes stated that “ there’s a little room for improvement ” when it comes to the recent DC Comics movies as of late, reports Variety . With that said, Bewkes also pointed out that while Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad got panned by critics, the films themselves have been financially successful.
Batman v Superman had a budget of $250 million and made approximately $330.2 million, while Suicide Squad had a budget of $175 million and has made over $307 million in the U.S. so far ($720 million worldwide), so that is nothing to sniff at. Still, critics, fans, and, yes, even investors haven’t been all that impressed with the final product. Without stating that Warner Bros. failed, Bewkes is saying that there are some changes in store for the future upcoming films.
“The execution did deliver what we wanted to do. We can do a little better on the creative … The DC Comics characters … have a little more lightness in them than maybe what you saw in those movies, so we’re thinking about that.”
Bewkes also said that Warner Bros. has asked for DC Comics’ president Geoff Johns to help guide Wonder Woman and Justice League , which are both coming to theaters next year.
Time Warner CEO Says the DC Extended Universe Has Been Financially Successful – https://t.co/fx8BF6u5nl pic.twitter.com/mbMLBlvT32
— DC Comics Movie (@DCComicsMovie) September 22, 2016
“The main thing was to launch DC and reinvigorate it with the fan base,” he said. “The reboot of Batman with Ben Affleck (in the role) was a big success.”
He also pointed out that fans really responded well to Gal Gadot’s take on the character of Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman .
Although Wonder Woman won’t be in theaters until June of 2017, the movie and other DC Comics movies are frequently in the news, with fans and critics crying for better movie experiences, while Warner Bros. says, “We got a handle on this.”
However, despite the financial success of these movies, both groups know that if the next two films don’t improve greatly, fans will stay home. You can only put out less-than-stellar material and still expect to make money. Batman v Superman has a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 27 percent and Suicide Squad just under that with 26 percent.
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David Betancourt from the Washington Post says that Johns is the only superhero who will be able to save the franchise describing the man as an encyclopedic genius when it comes to DC Comics. In addition to being a great storyteller, Johns has overseen an episode or two of The CW’s The Flash TV series.
“Johns is connected to DC’s original golden era of superhero movies, as he interned alongside original Superman director Richard Donner,” said Betancourt. “Previously DC Comics’s chief creative officer, he has overseen — if not written himself — some of DC’s most popular story lines over the past 10 years (Green Lantern and the Flash to name a few). DC Comics’s current ‘Rebirth’ era has Johns’s comic-book DNA all over it, as he helped wash away the polarizing New 52 reboot and brought DC Comics back to its storytelling basics to much fan approval… Johns can be the person who can help close the gap between hardcore fans and critics of DC movies.”
[Featured Image by Warner Bros.]