Warner Bros. head honco Kevin Tsujihara has stepped down from his post at the WB— #MeToo’ed, if you will, by Kim Masters and Tatiana Siegel’s 3.6 Hollywood Reporter story about his cheating on his wife with British actress Charlotte Kirk.
Read moreDCEU Shared Universe No Longer Top Priority According to WB CEO
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara is basically putting the nail in the coffin of the DCEU, saying he’s concentrating on individualized stories and NOT an interconnected movie universe a la the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Read more"Justice League" Box-Office: What happened?! How DC and the WB messed up the DCEU.
Ok, so you're probably wondering how did things become so bad for the WB and the DCEU? In a nutshell, it's more complicated than the following 400 words thesis.
The WB was desperately in need of a franchise, The Dark Knight trilogy was done ditto Harry Potter and the Hobbit. "Man of Steel" was made with the intent to be followed by a sequel, however, the WB decided to turn that sequel into the misbegotten "Batman vs Superman" and had that film launch their unprepared cinematic universe. That same year, the WB interfered a lot with David Ayer's "Suicide Squad," production rumors were swirling all around and, as you know, the film is now the stuff of cinematic infamy.
We all thought they had set-up a concrete cinematic universe by that point. Ten movies were announced, to be released from 2016 to 2020. Not even halfway through that slate of films, and banking on Patty Jenkins' "Wonder Woman" having surprise success at the Box-Office, the WB decided to have "Wonder Woman 2" released before "Flash" and "The Green Lantern." Not just that, they also decided to add in a slew of new projects in the span of 6 months: "Suicide Squad 2," "Justice League Dark," "The Batman," "Batgirl," "Gotham City Sirens," "Nightwing," "Man of Steel 2," "Black Adam," "Deadshot," "Lobo" "Deathstroke" and the untitled Joker and Harley Quinn film, produced by Martin Scorsese. Phew, suffice to say, the plans of a DCEU are all but fucked. In fact, there never really was a plan, they were changing their plan every month. They haven't even announced if Ben Affleck will return as Batman. They were supposed to rebuild around Affleck and now he may be done, with Jake Gyllenhaal being sought for the caped crusader role. That much anticipated "Flash" movie? It's lost, multiple directors have quit or been fired.
Who is to blame for all this? The WB of course, they set their sights on Zack Snyder to herald the DCEU forward, that didn't work so well. They wanted Avengers-sized success but didn’t want to put the time, effort, thought and resources into building it up in a thoughtfully conceived manner. At this point, my advice to them would be to do what they did with "Wonder Woman" and actually hire competent directors that have talent and that can put their own signature to the films. You might as well get on the critics good side because, and I do say this with the utmost confidence, I do believe bad reviews have contributed to this debacle.