The Future Of The DCU, New Logo, And Reboots Explained

Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show I’m your host, Paul, and with the DCEU now deceased, I thought we’d talk a look at the future and discuss the rumours about what’s going on with James Gunns DCU. In this video, we’re gonna be breaking down the updates since our last video and also giving our thoughts on the strategy that Warner Brothers is taking.

The New DCU Logo Explained

Now the first thing I wanna talk about is the new DCU logo which leaked on Twitter last week. Posts with it in were getting DMCA’d by Warner Brothers, so I don’t want to show it in the video, but I can describe it, mate, or you can google it to see. Don’t leave the video; I said don’t leave.

Now the logo has the blue DC logo that’s been used by the company for the last couple of years. In the middle, it says studios, and then to the left and right of it, we have the members of the Justice League. From left to right, this is Green Lanter, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Flash and Aquaman. Now, this instantly lets us know that this will be a strong focus for the universe, with the Justice League being the main characters that they’re pushing. The DCEU, of course, took a strong focus on it, too and Warner Brothers pretty much rushed out the Justice League movie so that they could catch up with Marvel.

Didn’t really work out, and they’ve actually delayed stuff to the point that they’re now having to reset the entire universe and do it again cos they f**ked up.

Superman and Wonder Woman’s Futures

Anyway, we have had some more info on Superman and Wonder Woman, with the Hollywood reporter saying that both Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot’s roles in The Flash had been completely cut. This was something that was quite shocking to me as I’d heard from my sources that Gal was actually a big part of the scenes that she was in. Henry’s parts were quite small, and they were added back in September. However, Wonder Woman’s role wasn’t gonna be a major part of the movie, but there were a lot of the more poignant moments that featured her in it.

Now this was later debunked by the Twitter account The Flash Film News, which said that the scenes with Gal remained.

Honestly, I don’t think DC know for definite what they’re doing yet, and with the movie releasing in June, it’s possible that they will do multiple cuts of it to screen to audiences.

Now beyond that, Daniel RPK posted last night that Gal Gadot was no longer gonna be playing Wonder Woman and that we were definitely getting a full reboot. Gal was kind of the person that I think was gonna be the one that indicated this, along with Jason Momoa. We’ve, of course, had both Henry and Ben Affleck being people that were in and out of DC at several points over the last couple of years, and Ray Fisher, of course, was no longer part of the universe either. All the stuff with Ezra Miller made it pretty much impossible for the studio to keep working with him, and thus, all that remained from the League were Momoa and Gal. If either of them could go, then they all could go, and, yeah, if this is true, then they’re all out.

Zachary Levi Is Also Out

From what I’ve been told, Zachery Levi is also out as Shazam, and this is before his next movie even releases.

Now I’ve said this in another video, and I got some backlash for it, but I’m gonna say it again. I think that doing this big announcement before the release of Shazam 2, The Flash and Aquaman 2 is a stupid mistake, as it will make those movies pretty pointless to see.

Now, what backlash did I get from saying that?

Well, the main thing is that shared universes have kinda f**ked things and that if a movie is good, then it doesn’t matter if it’s part of a universe or not. Totally agree, and that’s a valid point, but when the movie is part of a shared universe already, then I think it can have detrimental effects. Let’s be honest, though most people that were gonna see those movies will probably go and see them again, there will be a number of people that now don’t because they aren’t that interested in these characters.

It could end up costing Warner Brothers a couple of million dollars, so to me, it was a stupid thing to do when they still have three movies that they’re releasing.

How To Get A Shared Universe Right

Now shared universes, in general, work in this way.

You have your big characters and movies that people wanna go see. However, what the studio then do is push lesser-known ones that people normally wouldn’t bother to go out and see if it wasn’t part of the universe. Marvel has banked on this as well, and there are a lot of characters in the universe who are really obscure that have gotten attention given to them by general audiences because people have felt like they NEED to see their movie in order to understand the greater story. I’ll always give props to Marvel for what they did with Captain Marvel, and they dropped it right between Infinity War and Endgame because they knew that people would go see the movie to understand the post-credits scene of the former movie and get an idea of what could happen in Endgame.

Captain Marvel made 1.2 billion at the box office, making it even more successful than the first Wonder Woman movie. So with all that being said, that’s why I think it’s stupid and why it’s probably pointless seeing those three movies now for most people. Sure Flash, Shazam and Aquaman mega fans are gonna be there on day one, and I’m guessing that a lot of DC fans in general will too. But they kinda cut off that market that only cares about shared movie universes which might not be massive but it’s probably substantial enough that it’s gonna stop those films from doing the higher box office numbers that they could if they were part of the same universe.

You went full reboot. Never go full reboot.

However, saying all that, the box office for Black Adam has shown that maybe the interest in DC, in general, isn’t there and this is why they’ve decided to scrap it all completely rather than trying to salvage something that might not work going forward. I think it is a big ask for fans, though, who’ve been told to be patient for the last ten years cos DC was building towards something to now just be told ‘yeah, nothing is going anywhere.’

James Gunn’s Superman

Now Gunn has started discussing what’s gonna be in his Superman, and we have some minor details about what he wants to do.

I think when we look back at the DCEU that it’s very clear what happened early on to make the universe the way it was.

The Dark Knight trilogy had just been a massive success, and Man Of Steel was sort of in the same mould as that, with it being a more down-to-earth Superman that had a more grounded tone to it. Nolan was, of course, a producer on it, and they even got David S Goyer to help write it, who was also a writer on some of the Dark Knight movies.

Now by the sounds of it, they’re doing something similar to that, but instead of the Dark Knight trilogy, they’re using The Batman as the sort of format for the future.

The Batman was a year two-story that already had the character set up, and from here, they could hit the ground running.

From what we’ve been told about the Superman story, it’s gonna be pretty much the same as that, with it centring on a young Clark Kent who’s just arrived in Metropolis. It’ll focus on him reporting, meeting Lois, hiding his secret and so on. You know, the usual s**t.

This is similar to how Batman met Catwoman for the first time, and it’s clear that they’re viewing that sort of dynamic as the secret to success.

Now Gunn has stated several times that the reason he couldn’t cast Cavill for this is that he wanted a young Superman. However, Cavill is about 39 years old, and he doesn’t really look it, so a lot of people were like wtf.

Why Gunn Is Doing This To Superman

Now I think what Gunn has done is stupid. However, I can see why he’s probably done this because they want this universe going forward for ten years, and by the time it’s all wrapped up, the DCEU actors will all be a lot older.

I know people said you could de-age him, but it adds a lot to the budget, so I can see why the studio did what it did.

Now personally, I think the way they treated Cavill is super f**ked up and that it might even be something that bites them in the butt down the line.

The whole way the situation has played out with him has been a pretty bad one, and it might just put a number of people off because of the way things were handled.

Now Cavill actually auditioned for Superman all the way back with Superman Returns. He lost out to Brandon Routh but years later, he managed to land his dream job for Man Of Steel. It’s one of my favourite DCEU movies, but mixed reviews and a box office that didn’t deliver the billions Warner were expecting made them think twice.

Batman V Superman was next up, and though a Warner Brothers screening of it got a standing ovation, the studio decided to mess around and cut half an hour from it. Suicide Squad was given to a trailer company to cut, and we’ll be here all day talking about what happened with Justice League. We then had the post-credits scene for Shazam, and this would later be followed up by the cameo in Peacemaker in which he was basked in shadow out of the light.

How WB Did Cavill Dirty

The whole time. Cavill is getting messed around, and it wouldn’t be until 2022 that a glimmer of hope really came back. Sure we had the Snyder Cut, but comments by the execs and the fact that there wasn’t really any further movement in that universe made fans think that he was getting messed around as well.

However, The Rock pulled some strings behind the scenes, and he got Henry back to shoot a cameo in Black Adam. From the rumours surrounding this, we have a rough idea of what happened with him, and he was basically brought back, told they were doing cameos for Black Adam and The Flash, and that Man Of Steel 2 was being greenlit and worked on. This is true, too, as we know that the script was in early development, and though it’s not the reason given why Cavill left The Witcher, I think you’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t think it had at least some bearing on his decision. Now Cavill was also told to put an announcement out on social media saying that he was back, and you can totally see why he’d be in the mindstate that he was now locked in.

However, Cavill was then called into a room and told that everything he’d been told was happening no longer was and that he was out.

Pretty brutal way to handle it, especially with it now apparently coming out that Gunn was actually working on the Superman script for months as Cavill was also being told that he was in. It has the potential to start the new universe off on a really bad footing, and I think that the only way to silence the critics is for this to actually work.

Why Superman Cannot Be Allowed To Fail

Now I think in order for all this to work that the upcoming Superman movie needs to be one of the best comic book movies of all time. I’m talking casting, directing, the bloody script that people died for, all of it. If it’s even average, then it’s gonna be torn apart by people cos we had to throw everything out for it.

I don’t even know if they should’ve announced an entire movie universe before making this first movie either, because if this fails, then all that is f**ked as well. I dunno why studios time and time again do this, and to me, they should’ve just done with they did with The Batman and Joker, saying that it was disconnected from everything. Then you don’t have the pressure that there are movies down the line resting on it, and it can just be its own thing. Again kinda goes back to that shared universe thing from before, where it can really be a double-edged sword.

I think Gunn needs to do a full reboot and get rid of both Peacemaker and Suicide Squad as well. It will be pure nepotism if he keeps the universe his wife is in, and I think if he cuts that, then it will show actual leadership and that he’s not just trying to give people close to him advantages when the big names are all being thrown out.

Watch Sean Gunn get cast as Bruce Wayne, I tell ya.

Can James Gunn And DC Actually Pull It Off?

So yeah, who knows what’s gonna happen.

I think that out of all the people working in Hollywood at the moment, James Gunn is probably one of the handful of people that can pull this off. There’s just a lot of pressure to hit a home run, and if it even falls slightly short of that there’s gonna be people complaining that they threw away a lot of things to get more of the same but with different actors.

So yeah, that’s all the updates, our opinion and basically us moaning about some first-world problems.

Obviously, I’d love to hear your thoughts, so make sure you comment below and let me know.

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If you want something else to watch, then make sure you check out our breakdown of the perfect scene in Spider-Man Homecoming. We break down the entire thing, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.