Warner Bros. is now going to focus on coming up with a 10-year film plan for its DC characters inspired by Disney’s successful Marvel Studios machine.
During Warner Bros. Discovery’s Q2 earnings call on Thursday afternoon, CEO David Zaslav was asked about the recent cancelation of the “Batgirl” film, despite being near completion and the direction in which he’ll be taking the DC Universe.
“Our ambition is to bring Warner back and to produce great, high-quality films,” Zaslav said during the Q&A part of the earnings call. “As we look at the opportunities that we have, broadly, DC is one of the top of the list for us.”
Zaslav specifically noted Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman are all popular characters that offer a “big opportunity” for the company.
“We have done a reset,” Zaslav said of DC at Warner Bros. “We’ve restructured the business where there will be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC. It’s very similar to the structure that Alan Horn and Bob Iger put together very effectively with Kevin Feige at Disney.”
He added: “We think that we could build a long-term, much stronger, sustainable growth business out of DC. And as part of that, we’re gonna focus on quality. We’re not gonna release any film before it’s ready. We’re not gonna release a film to make a quarter. The focus is gonna be, ‘How do we make each of these films, in general, as good as possible?’
Recently, WBD hired former Walt Disney Studios’ chairman Alan Horn in a consulting role.
Prior to his decade-long tenure at Disney, Horn oversaw the success of Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” trilogy along with the “Harry Potter” franchise.
“DC is something that we think we could make better and we’re focused on it now,” Zaslav added, noting that they’re still releasing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s “Black Adam” along with “The Flash” and the “Shazam” sequel.
