Supergirl? What’s that?
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was asked if he’s considered any “change of strategy” at DC during the company’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts Thursday morning.
“You haven’t talked about DC for a while,” the analyst said. “I know with films, sometimes they perform, sometimes they don’t. But is there any change in strategy?”
Zaslav replied that DC co-chief James Gunn is “focused on Man of Tomorrow. I saw some pictures yesterday that looked amazing. Actually, yesterday was James’ birthday, and he’s out working. He’s working 16, 18 hours a day. It looks fantastic. We’re super excited about it.”
The executive also gave some thoughts about other DC projects.
“[The Batman Part II director] Matt Reeves, I spoke to over the weekend, and he’s working very hard on Batman, and we have Clayface coming up soon, which looks terrific,” Zaslav said. “We got Lanterns launching in the next few weeks on HBO, which Casey [Bloys] and Sarah [Aubrey] are super excited about, and so DC feels very good, and we have a robust pipeline, and Peter [Safran] and James are hard at work.”
Naturally, any top executive is going to do their best to downplay any failures and pump up whatever comes next. On Wednesday, Disney admitted to shareholders that Moana and The Mandalorian and Grogu underperformed at the box office but spun both as titles that helped boost revenue in other parts of the company.
Zaslav has a bit of a reputation for overhyping superhero titles, as the executive famously called The Flash :the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen” at CinemaCon in 2023
Supergirl only made $126 million globally at the box office, a rather weak number for a major superhero title, particularly since it was a spin-off of last year’s Superman, which made $618 million globally.
Coming up next is Clayface, which is considered a bit of a risk as it’s a blend of comic-book spectacle and body horror. But the film’s trailers have been really well received by fans. The project is directed by James Watkins and has a script by horror hitmaker Mike Flanagan along with Hossein Amini. Clayface hits theaters Oct. 23.
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