DC’s Movie Plan Includes Less Movies, More Shrugging Confusedly

The Hollywood Reporter has a big article on the partnership of Warner Bros. and DC again (partners in that they’re owned by the same company) which is really long and boring and doesn’t say very much. I thought I’d give you the noteworthy bits.

1) Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison and Marv Wolfman have been named as “consultants” on a few upcoming superhero films. Johns in on  Flash, Wolfman is on Teen Titans, and Morrison is on god-know-what. Please note none of these films are in development except in the vaguest sense.

2) What DC does have coming out, theoretically: the Green Lantern movie, the Jonah Hex movie, the Human Hard Target TV series (which looked pretty good), a movie based on The Losers and a movie based on Red.

3) This is my favorite part, so I have to quote it:

“One of the things that has differentiated us for most of the last
20 years is the depth of our library and the depth of the creative
material that we’ve put out and the opportunities that creates for
other media,” DC Comics president Paul Levitz said.Still, when
“Dark Knight” invaded theaters last summer, critics of DC and
Warners complained there didn’t appear to be a grand strategy in
place to exploit DC properties.

In contrast, DC arch-rival Marvel moved quickly in the wake of its
successful “Iron Man” to stake out a series of release dates for a
slew of movies, branding them as part of one big Marvel universe
leading to “The Avengers,” which arrives in 2012.

But DC and Warners have taken a different approach, arguing that DC
has a wider breadth of books than other comics companies. They
insist their situation isn’t comparable to Marvel, which already
has licensed out to other studios a number of its biggest titles:
Spider-Man is housed at Sony, and X-Men and Fantastic Four are at
Fox.

Look, DC — I hate to break it to you, but you’re a comic book company, and a superhero one at that. You have to be compared to Marvel. You’re pretty much the only comparison to Marvel. And in terms of movies, Marvel’s kicking your ass. Without Vertigo, DC would have two films coming out  — Green Lantern and Jonah Hex, that’s all. Meanwhile, Marvel has Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, Spider-Man 4 and the Avengers, all top-tier Marvel franchises. Frankly, it’s actually kind of embarrassing how DC seems to be able to make movies and series of their Vertigo titles work, but not their actual superheroes. I’m not really sure what the point of this article was except to point out that DC still doesn’t have any clue about their movie plans. If so… well, I think we could’ve guessed that.