"Superman" issue #76, 1952
San Diego Comic-Con generated big news this week with the official announcement that Warner Bros. will follow up their recent Superman reboot film Man of Steel with a team-up movie featuring Superman and a brand new rebooted Batman (it will not have any relation to the Batman films by Christopher Nolan), which will apparently be titled either Batman vs. Superman or Superman vs. Batman ( WB has registered several URLs, and the film's writer David Goyer confirmed the potential titles).
Additionally, it appears Warner will also be releasing a Flash film (it's not clear whether or not this might be a version of Goyer's own Flash screenplay from a few years back), as well as the long-anticipated Justice League movie. But is it a good idea to put Batman and Superman together on the big screen so soon?
The revelations pretty much follow the plan I've been (ahem) "guessing at" for the last several weeks, aside from the omission of an official announcement of a solo Batman film between the Superman-Batman team-up movie and the bigger Justice League team-up (specifically, I've written here and elsewhere that WB would probably release a Superman sequel - or rather, "World's Finest" movie - featuring Batman in 2015, a Batman solo movie, probably a Flash solo movie, and then a Justice League movie in 2017 or 2018). And while it's not my personal preference for the ordering of films and not what I think would be the ideal situation for positioning the DC Comics cinematic universe, it's frankly a pretty solid plan based on several key considerations that will probably help lay the foundation for a successful broader adaptation of the rest of the comic book source material.
Batman and Superman are easily the most popular superheroes in the DC stable, and Batman is arguably the single most popular superhero among mainstream audiences at the box office right now. Marvel- Disney has been brilliant in their strategies and their movies are consistently high quality, and they've been bold and aggressive about pursuing their properties, but only Spider-Man and now maybe Iron Man are even in the same league as Batman and Superman in terms of broad mainstream popularity at the box office - Marvel didn't use Spider-Man in their cinematic plans only because the character is unavailable to them (although perhaps that will change in the not-too-distant-future, depending on how things work out, as I explained in a recent previous article).
Batman's popularity with mainstream audiences is particularly potent and consistent, with director Christopher Nolan's acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy amassing nearly $2.5 billion at the box office over an eight-year period and about $3 billion overall with DVD/Blu-ray sales and rentals plus some other merchandising. In fact, Batman's success has been pretty consistent since he made his modernized big-screen debut in 1989. Adjusted for inflation, the first three Batman films made an average of about $500+ million dollars each, and even the universally panned 1997 flick Batman & Robin grossed $345 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. The merchandising was equally successful, with the 1989 film amazingly generating more money from merchandise than from the box office (meaning more than $700 million in merchandising, when adjusted for inflation). We could even look back at the old campy television series for more evidence of "Batmania" as a recurring trend in pop culture, and evidence of Batman's enduring widespread popularity outside of comic book fandom.
Iron Man came close to the Nolan Batman's level of success, after the enormous success of boosted that trilogy to more than $2.4 billion in global receipts; but while that film was excellent (read my review here) and without a doubt the character has built a huge fanbase, we also have to give some of the credit to the overall Marvel movie brand that is firmly established in audiences' minds and helped propel the third Iron Man entry to such dizzying heights. After four films, Spider-Man has an enormous $3.248 billion in worldwide box office over the last eleven years, and Sam Raimi's trilogy alone matched Nolan's Batman trilogy's gross (actually exceeding it by several million dollars). Over time, with additional Spidey movies already in the pipe and the likelihood the character will enjoy plenty more into the future, Spider-Man will probably prove as long-lived and popular as Batman with worldwide audiences.
But the fact remains, only Batman has proven capable of delivering multiple solo adventures surpassing the $1 billion mark so far, and seems to generate a special sort of connection with audiences unlike most other superheroes. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that (and here I must respectfully disagree with my esteemed colleague Scott Mendelson) Batman's world tries to mirror our own enough to trick us into thinking it's more "realistic" as it pretends that its outlandish content is "plausible" or "possible," a point noted within The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media, a scholarly examination of Batman's mainstream popularity, as well as being a point repeatedly stated by the filmmakers themselves (for example, Christopher Nolan of course regularly explains his films were designed to try and imagine what it might be like if Batman existed with a world as close to our own as can be portrayed while still retaining faithfulness to the characters).
This is enhanced by the fact those films also include dramatic narrative arcs that resonated strongly with viewers and spoke to issues, fears, concerns, and hopes that were further reflective of things familiar to viewers from their own lives. It was definitely all achieved with great filmmaking and loads of entertainment value, but it would be a mistake to ignore how much Batman has a particular appeal to audiences precisely because the character's movies have been the best at letting us pretend they are grounded in some degree of what we imagine to be "realism."
So, any attempt to build the DC universe on screen will inherently seek to tap into the vast reserve of audience good-will toward and appetite for Batman stories. After all, aside from the Nolan Batman films, how many other successful attempts have there been to adapt DC superheroes to the big screen in the last fifteen years? Superman Returns was a reasonably financially successful film, but didn't live up to expectations. Green Lantern performed too poorly and got mostly negative reviews. The Spirit, Watchmen, Jonah Hex, and Catwoman all failed at the box office, too.
Let's face it, besides Batman and Superman, Warner's attempts to develop other DC superhero properties haven't worked out very well. And before you claim Warner hasn't been trying, remember that the studio consistently sought to develop projects for Green Arrow, the Flash, and Wonder Woman - the latter seeing several script attempts, even one by Joss Whedon, plus two attempts at television series for the Amazon princess - but just didn't find anything they felt sure enough about greenlighting.
They also made two separate attempts to make some kind of Justice League film, the first of which - Justice League: Mortal - being shut down just before filming could get started. Agree or disagree with them about the merits of any particular project itself, but Warner was indeed attempting to figure out a way to get more superheroes adapted to film. Yet time and again, the evidence kept suggesting Batman and Superman were the go-to franchises, and that any attempt to build a wider cinematic universe might depend on first getting those two characters up and running in a shared world.
Man of Steel is a solid hit, and laid the groundwork for a successful Superman franchise going forward. WB is without a doubt happy with the box office numbers, and with the team that delivered the project. However, it has to be noted that right before the film opened and then in the aftermath of the opening weekend box office receipts, expectations were high, with predictions in the $700-800 million range and a lot of folks wondering if it might have a shot at $1 billion.
The studio worked to avoid letting expectations run too high, but they seemed almost giddy with anticipation and likely were thinking they had a good shot at scoring a final tally in the $800 million range. It appears the film will end its run somewhere slightly south of $700 million after all - again, a great success and they are surely happy about it, but I think there were more than a few people harboring secret expectations of a runaway hit not too far behind Batman's recent tallies.
The point is, Man of Steel needs a follow-up that improves upon that movie's success and fixes some of the things that resulted in the first film getting such mixed critical reception. And the simple fact is that adding Batman into the mix instantly makes the follow-up a contender for the $1 billion box office range. If the movie has a good story and good casting for Batman, it should easily top the receipts for Man of Steel by a wide margin.
Nor can we ignore the fact that since a follow-up to Man of Steel would naturally come in 2015, that means it would be competing for attention with that year's big sequel film The Avengers: Age of Ultron. It's inevitable that there will be comparisons between what Warner is doing to develop their superhero universe and what Marvel has already accomplished, so the next move for WB had to be a big one. Teaming up Batman and Superman, and putting attention on the fact it's going to be an epic confrontation and battle between the two characters, will go a long way toward matching the frenzied buzz surrounding Marvel's team-up sequel.
The financial benefits of Batman's involvement make this a no-brainer (regardless of whether some of us think Batman should be reintroduced first in his own solo movie first, which is indeed what I think should be done). But it doesn't end there - there are also some valid storytelling reasons to utilize Batman and Superman as the foundations for a shared DC cinematic universe.
Teaming Batman up with Superman actually is very reflective of the source material and how the development of a broader consistently shared comic book universe came about for DC anyway. While the original Justice Society of America comics in the 1940s brought together various superheroes into a team setting, it didn't actually create any official sort of shared universe outside of the team-up title itself. However, Batman and Superman began appearing in one another's monthly books and in World's Finest Comics through the 1950s, existing together in a shared universe. Those team-up adventures led to other such crossovers with different superheroes, and helped build toward the consistent one-world portrayal of the stable of characters, leading to a revival of the Justice Society as the Justice League during the 1960s and the creation of an official background that included Superman and Batman as founding members of the team.
The films will be mirroring that progression, basically, except obviously Warner is not developing a wide array of additional solo character films before introducing them in Justice League. It appears at this time that we'll only see Superman, Batman, and the Flash before the Justice League team makes its appearance, and it's a shame there won't also be a Wonder Woman solo movie, since she's one of the so-called "Big Three" characters at DC Comics and a solo Wonder Woman movie could actually have a very strong chance of success at the box office, contrary to most industry assessments. (Watch for my article later this week explaining in detail why the numbers suggest a Wonder Woman solo film could score a win at the box office!) But that's apart from the question of using Batman in a movie with Superman to kick-start the larger DC universe on screen, and eventually we will see some additional solo franchises anyway (even though I'd prefer they all come out before Justice League, obviously).
And there's one other interesting way in which Batman can help the storytelling of the follow-up to Man of Steel - Clark Kent as an investigative reporter, seeking this new costumed vigilante prowling around Gotham City, relying not just on his superpowers but on his reporter skills to dig into the mystery of the Batman. If he's also working on some story about Lex Luthor or another villainous scheme of some sort, then there arises a perfect opportunity to merge two plots when ultimately Batman's own investigations lead to the same villainous scheme and the heroes need to join forces in the end. Add to that the adaptation of the famous story arc involving the government seeking some sort of help from Superman in locating and stopping Batman (from the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, the fourth chapter/book of which is actually titled The Dark Knight Falls), and that's a nice set of options for a great story.
Using Batman again to help support the development of superhero properties works, both from a financial standpoint and in terms of reflecting the source material to best build toward a larger world of superheroes on film. Superman and Batman should be the earliest superheroes, the ones whom all the rest look to as trailblazers and leaders. And since much of the larger DC universe is so often defined by the relationship between Superman and Batman, including their frequent disagreements and fights, it makes sense to use that as a framework for what comes after.
Turn the page to keep reading about Batman vs. Superman!
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