With Marvel pumping out smash hit after smash hit, it seems like a no-brainer to see that what the difference between the Warner’s brain trust at the Marvel one is having a solid person — a Kevin Feige — at the helm guiding the direction of the franchise. As president of Marvel Studios, Feige serves this role. He steers and directs the MCU, but not in such a heavy-handed way the directors don’t want to hop aboard and make their mark in an already very crowded pool.
But that begs the question — with DC’s helmsmen seemingly jumping ship after only a movie or three, who would remain long enough to help build a stable of talent to oversee a broader-picture outline to lay out the franchise for years to come? Who at DC could be their Kevin Feige?
The Attempts So Far
Warner’s has gone through lots of dance partners with their big superhero franchise lately, trying to play catch-up with the runaway success of the MCU’s vast, interconnected web of stories and crossovers and Easter eggs, the comics arm of Disney having found a way to replicate what comics do best on the big screen itself. Warner’s first started out with Zack Snyder at the helm, thinking the man who could translate Moore and Miller to pretty good acclaim might be right for taking a whack at their own stable of properties.
Snyder, however, saw characters like Superman a little bit differently than everyone else did. He wanted to go grim and gritty with every aspect of the often whizz-bang, glossy DCU. His first move was to turn gee-shucks farmboy-turned-reporter Clark Kent into a neck-breaking rampage alien laying waste to Metropolis in his quest to stop General Zod — a take that sparked the ire of many a longtime Superman fan. From there the character went toe-to-toe with Batman, died, and came back even weirder and darker. Enter Joss Whedon, stage right.
When Snyder had to bow out due to family troubles and whatever other behind-the-scenes shenanigans went on, Warner’s hired Joss Whedon, the man who’d done what seemed impossible and brought all of the MCU together for smash-hit Avengers films. He retooled Snyder’s Justice League material, adding here, snipping there, and turning in a Frankenstein’s monster of a film where all the seams were clearly showing. This wasn’t the magic shot that Warner’s was hoping for, tossing their concern at the Avengers helmer and expecting him to spin straw into gold.
Exit Whedon and enter James Gunn, the man who’d turned Marvel’s obscure 70s comic The Guardians of the Galaxy into massive hits and made Groot as famous a household name as Spider-Man (and making Baby Groot the first Grogu in terms of pint-sized popularity). Temporarily on the outs with Disney due to an Astro-turfed backlash over years-old tweets, Gunn went to Warner’s wanting to try his hand at their botched Suicide Squad attempt.
Taking the premise and putting his own stamp on it, this was more in the line of what Warner’s had been hoping for when they’d tried to poach Whedon. Gunn, however, still had his heart set on finishing his Guardians trilogy. Despite turning out a massively popular show based on his The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker (with yet another on the drawing board), he was never going to stick around as the guiding hand the producer’s at Warner’s wanted him to be. And he has said he wouldn’t take the job anyway.
DC’s Best Choice(s)
Right now, Warner's best hope seems to lie with Greg Berlanti. Sure, the answer seems obvious, but it appears that it's only obvious to those who aren't executives behind the movie versions of the DCU properties. The man is responsible for turning a character like the Green Arrow into a mega-hit (in terms of modern TV) and has helped create series such as The Flash, Superman & Lois, Supergirl, Titans, and Legends of Tomorrow (whose shows have spun off their own successes, like Doom Patrol). Yet, Warner's doesn't see him as someone who can make the jump from the small screen to the silver screen.
Despite Berlanti creating appointment television out of almost the entire stable of DC characters (since they reserve Batman almost exclusively for the big screen), and despite fans clamoring for it, the bigwigs behind the Warner’s curtain have kept him where he is. This may be in part because the guy’s a hit-maker right where’s he at. If he abandoned his TV children to play Icarus at the movies, the studio might shoot themselves once in both feet. On the other hand, the odds of a guy with that success ratio flopping like a dolphin with no flippers is pretty low.
But Warner’s has other options to keep their eye on. Matt Reeves successfully rehabilitated the dormant Planet of the Apes franchise with his prequels after Tim Burton effectively curb-stomped it, and then went on to reinvigorate Batman in a way nobody saw coming. What's more, he did the latter with a bigger picture in mind. There’s already a Penguin spin-off TV series in the works, an Arkham series, sequels, and more. If he could create a universe just out of this DC offering, there’s a good chance that if he got the keys to the larger kingdom he’d have a ball.
Then there's James Wan. The man has created Hollywood’s only other successful shared universe in film, The Conjuring series, for Warner’s already. Besides turning out a crackerjack Aquaman movie, the guy knows how to make hits, how to develop characters and villains audiences love, and how to mash them all up into a graveyard smash (which others have tried and crashed and burned). Three big earners have been churned out of one haunted doll alone, let alone all the other ghosties and ghoulies they have in store.
The question is which, if any of them, would like the job. All have different qualities that would make them great fits as the heads of DC’s newly reinvigorated attempt at milking their DCU. However, it remains to be seen if the execs at Warner’s are able to see the talent they’ve already cultivated right in their own backyard.