At the same Time Warner investor meeting where HBO announced its upcoming standalone streaming services, Warner Bros. unveiled the full scope of its plan to turn its DC Comics properties into a true rival to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Warner had previously announced that nine DC movies were coming between now and 2020, but only revealed one title, Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, which is coming in March of 2016. Today the company revealed at least nine more. They are:
2016: Suicide Squad
2017: Wonder Woman, Justice League
2018: The Flash, Aquaman
2019: Shazam, Justice League 2
2020: Cyborg, Green Lantern
That’s already a huge amount of news including, definitively now, a Wonder Woman movie for Gal Gadot, who will co-star in Batman V Superman, plus a movie for the Suicide Squad, a longtime DC team composed of villains who take on dangerous missions on behalf of the U.S. government in exchange for commuted jail sentences.
But wait, there’s more! Warners also announced several key pieces of DC casting: Ezra Miller will play The Flash, and Jason Momoa will, as previously rumored, play Aquaman. It also confirmed the worst-kept secret on Dwayne Johnson’s Twitter feed; he’ll be playing Black Adam in 2019’s Shazam. But wait, there’s also more than that! Per The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Fritz, DC also said it has four more DC movies in the works: a Green Lantern reboot (sorry Ryan Reynolds), standalone movies for Ben Affleck’s Batman and Henry Cavill’s Superman, and a film for Cyborg, a recent addition to comics’ Justice League (and former member of the sidekick team Teen Titans) who is, yes, a cyborg.
This is a lot to digest, but my first reaction is that Ezra Miller is an inspired choice for The Flash; he’s a really talented young actor who could really sell a smirky, snarky Flash like the one in the Justice League cartoons of the 2000s. And it will be great to finally see a Wonder Woman movie (or any female-driven superhero movie at all, for that matter). Growing up, I was always more of a Marvel guy, but this is a pretty impressive lineup of films. With the right writers and directors, Marvel really could have some distinguished competition on its hands.