DC Movie Schedule Drop

Warner Bros released it's entire planned schedule for it's movies from the DC Comics Universe.  Here's what we got:

2016 •DAWN OF JUSTICE • SUICIDE SQUAD
2017 •WONDER WOMAN •JUSTICE LEAGUE
2018 •THE FLASH •AQUAMAN
2019 •JUSTICE LEAGUE 2 •SHAZAM

In addition there are no dates but plans for a Green Lantern Reboot and a Cyborg movie, probably in 2020.  So contrary to what a lot of people were thinking and spouting off about on the internet, DC did indeed have a plan they were cooking up.  What's intriguing here is that DC will be getting into the meat of their schedule as Marvel goes and finishes up Phase 3 with the big Avengers-Thanos throwdown in 2018.  By then the murmurs about Superhero fatigue you're getting now will be full throated roars, so having a new slate of characters and stories up and running can breath any necessary new life into the genre.  Holding off until 2016 to start things off also means that you won't have a situation where both companies run out of steam at the same time and we hit with a plethora of second rate films on both sides.  The order of releases is interesting also.  We get Dawn of Justice then an immediate changeup to the Suicide Squad.  That gives an opening to introduce ARGUS (DC's version of Shield, with a little less morals) and some of the DC villains.  Wonder Woman gets her big introduction, and then the Justice League's big bow follows.  Then we get the Flash and Aquaman movies to expand on whatever introduction we get to them in the first Justice League film followed another full feature for the whole team followed by Shazam.  And once that's all wrapped finished we get Green Lantern and Cyborg movies to flesh out those characters.  Holding off the Green Lantern film until later also allows them a chance to get a better Green Lantern in place so that no one will care about that debacle with Ryan Reynolds anymore.  There's still a lot of time (almost two years) before we get the first movie so there are a lot of questions to be answered between now and then.

• Will we reach peak whining fanboy? - It's only been a couple of days, and it's already been unbearable.  I've heard that DC took too long, that they're rushing things, that they're copying Marvel, that they're not copying Marvel enough (by not connecting the movies to the TV shows), and that the movies are gonna suck anyway (I swear DC has seemed to have cornered the market on pre-hate).  And then there's the crying about the casting choices.  They chose to cast a different actor to play the Flash than on the TV shows; that set a lot of people off even though many of them didn't like Grant Gustin being chosen to play him on TV until three weeks ago when the show debuted.  Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot have been panned as choices for Batman and Wonder Woman ad nauseum, as has Jesse Eisenberg as the pick to play Lex Luthor.  I'm getting real close to asking the White House to name a new national holiday, Smack a Fanboy Day.

• Will we get any major story adaptations? - Obviously doing something huge like Blackest Night or Crisis on Infinite Earths is too much to ask.  But will we get something like Tower of Babel (which was already adapted into the animated film Justice League: Doom), or the Justice League - Origin from the New 52 continuity (which was also turned into an animated movie, Justice League: War)?  Maybe.  The separate films slated for Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman could be based on one of the well known story arcs as well.  More than likely you'll get an adaptation in name only, where the title and some elements of a known arc are used but with an original story (like Captain America: Winter Soldier).

                                                           

 
 

• Who else are we getting? We know about the Justice League members, Lex Luthor, and the Suicide Squad.  But as these films continue who else from the extended DC Universe will we get to see?  When they get around to doing another Batman film I'd like to see the extended family (Nightwing, Red Robin, Red Hood, Batgirl) in action.  I'm hoping that Green Lantern will be John Stewart (or Simon Baz if they really want to get crazy with it) and not just Hal Jordan again.  What other bad guys will we get?  Ocean Master (for Aquaman), Cheetah (Wonder Woman), Sinestro (Green Lantern)?  Or could we get the Red Lanterns?  There's so much there to work with beyond Luthor and Darkseid.

 We got a year and a half to speculate and find thing out.  I'm looking forward to it.