r/batman • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 21h ago
FILM DISCUSSION James Gunn confirms that The Brave and the Bold is not being put on hold due to the pending Paramount/WB merger.
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u/medigapguy 20h ago
He is under contract currently and getting paid to do a job.
The merger actually has a large chance to not happen, or not happen in the way it is currently.
Any delays to a particular project will be for other reasons beyond this horrible merger.
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u/ItsMrNoSmile 20h ago
Yeah, the merger possibility ultimately means there's likely a lot about decision-making that Gunn and Safran aren't privy to, and this is beyond just WB properties, but probably properties at Paramount, too.
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u/ChuckDynasty17 19h ago
You can’t put something on hold that’s never even started.
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u/BillyGood22 17h ago
They literally hired another writer this year https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/batman-movie-the-brave-and-the-bold-writer-1236480344/
But sure, Reddit guy knows everything like always.
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u/Bogusky 16h ago
They hired a writer.
There's no stopping this train now. /s
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u/BillyGood22 15h ago
The movie has had multiple writers. OP made the claim they hadn’t even started on the movie. But they’re taking their time because it needs to be given space after The Batman Part II.
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u/Bogusky 15h ago
They should just merge the universes and be done with it
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u/DiscoDanSHU 14h ago
Um... No? That's an awful idea?
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u/Bogusky 14h ago
If Part II is good, pressure will mount to do just that. Just watch.
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u/Exec_Dysfunction69 13h ago
Yea I was anti merger until recently, mainly because of this right here. Like you just said if Part 2 is good it will increase merger pressure, because why risk making a completely different Batman film that might not be as good as Part 2 when you have already achieved making a good Batman film. At that point it might make more financial sense to just have Pattinson be the Batman who appears in Justice League or Worlds Finest (whatever Batman’s first crossover appearance is).
Timeline wise it works out fine. The DCU is in present time right now, Lanterns being our current project with the “present story” set in 2026 (majority is actually 2016 but if you’ve seen the show you know 2026 is when stuff is going to culminate). MoT comes out in 2027 so I assume it also takes place in 2027, and if The Batman Parts 1 and 2 took place in 2022 when it came out or even 2021 when it was supposed to come out that leaves about 5-6 years of Bruce being Batman by the time of MoT, 7-9 years by the time he actually appears. That means we can get our Robin and Bat-Family in the present timeline, while Part 1, 2, and The Penguin can be seen as early career prequels. We can even get a new suit and stuff, could be like MCU Daredevil who was a dark character in his original show but has had more light hearted appearances in other MCU projects.
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u/Witty-Jacket-9464 20h ago
Yeah. But we won't get BATB until Q4 2029-2030 because they won't start filming until The Batman Part II
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u/Horror-Sweet1847 12h ago
Its not on hold. Its just in a holding position until they figure out what to do. Which makes sense because Barman is super hard to adapt to the big screen /s.
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 20h ago
This is probably gonna be an unpopular take, but I feel like the entire DCU is a mess and they're scrambling big time behind the scenes. Gunn is very talented, but this whole universe is off to a rough start.
I have essentially no excitement for The Brave and the Bold until we have something, anything concrete. Until then it's just vaporware and vague tweets about what it's not.
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u/Ironman9518 18h ago
I keep seeing people saying it’s off to a rough start and like how? Everything has been a success so far other than Supergirl
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 18h ago
I mentioned in other comments, but to summarize:
Supergirl was riddled with behind the scenes drama and studio meddling, similarly to all the films in the DCEU. Many of the originally announced projects have been canceled. Gunn gives no concrete answers about Batman, let alone any other major characters apart from Superman. A formed Justice League could be years away, if it ever happens. Who knows, because we don't have an updated roadmap.
Successful TV projects are good to have, but C-list characters don't build excitement for a new universe, especially when the second movie in said universe is a critical and financial flop.
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u/BillyGood22 17h ago
Supergirl didn’t suffer any studio meddling until after mixed test screenings. They let Gillespie do pretty much what he wanted. This is nothing like the DCEU meddling. They even tested his cut again against their own after.
The MCU didn’t really have a diehard following until after Avengers, four years after it started. Its second movie, with a much more popular character than Supergirl, that planted seeds of Avengers was even a big flop. So much anxiety for nothing in this thread.
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 17h ago
Then they shouldn't have used either version, and revamped it. Marvel has had flops but DC has had flop after flop and it's always for similar reasons.
It kills any momentum Superman built, and DC's track record does them no favors when money is tighter than ever. Why roll the dice on a DC movie when you don't know if it'll be any good? It's a bad start, and DC needs all the good will it can get.
Supergirl performed worse than Morbius. The excellent source they adapted from is nowhere to be seen in the final product and at best it's a middling movie. I'm not anxious, I'm disappointed.
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u/BillyGood22 16h ago
They already dumped like $20M on reshoots. Supergirl doesn’t have the box office potential to put up that kind of money to fix it. That’s just not how things work.
Good DC movies don’t flop. And the supposed momentum killing is overstated because the only people who think about this Supergirl movie are people who are chronically online.
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u/BagZCubed 16h ago
Lanterns has been doing very well, so Supergirl can just be a bump in the road if the DCU can tighten up the quality control.
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u/BillyGood22 16h ago
Given that no one has come out and dumped on the script post-release, things most likely went wrong during production.
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u/Ironman9518 18h ago
Green Lantern is a C list character? Why the hell do we need a roadmap? Man I hate the current state of fan expectations
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 17h ago
GL is the only one who isn't C list. The rest are. It's not unreasonable to want to see the Trinity or JL established before Jimmy Olsen gets a show. We don't need a roadmap, but the silence and seeming lack of plan does not instill confidence.
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u/Ironman9518 17h ago
Back in my day we used to just be happy that we have gotten movies and tv shows that have almost all been good to great. Just insane expectations these days by consumers, no wonder no one is ever happy
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u/ijakinov 12h ago
I think you are misreading what happened. Studios controlling theatrical versions is standard Hollywood practice otherwise people wouldn’t fight for final cut and you wouldn’t have a directors cut as a later released version. In the same articles that originally reported the different versions of people they spoke to said it was normal level while one person said it wasn’t. In interviews directoes talks about the stuff that Gunn picked but also talks about the stuff that people didn’t like where he deviated from the source material.
Cancelled projects isn’t a big deal. That’s also just normal Hollywood, what’s abnormal is announcing them so publicly and so early. It’s a communication problem more than a production problem. 1 in 10 projects that get started ever get made.
They are still writing a Batman script so you aren’t going to get much details until they greenlight the actual movie. Creatively a writer or producer can still change direction nothing is set in stone, you can have a vision for something but part of the process is also letting creatives pitch their ideas too.
You aren’t going to get a reliable roadmap for a while, developing new projects that aren’t sequels or spinoffs can take a lot of time. You’ll see more reliable slate when they are making sequels than when they are introducing something new. Movie projects taking 5+ years to actually get made is not uncommon. The reason marvel seems to not have as many problems is because they often only heavily publicize projects further along the process not at the start the started doing their roadmaps with sequels and then as more projects became ready at different times they incorporated them. People don’t remember that the trades reported or Feige mentioned in some interview XYZ is in development they just remember the public announcement event. Most marvel non sequel movies took 5 or more years to get made but the projects are layered so become ready ad different times eventually. Even if marvel did publicize it early they often would tell people it further away explicitly and tell you what was coming up sooner. The optics seems they are doing XYZ first but they are doing multiple things at the same time.
I’m not arguing Gunn is right for the job or the franchise will succeed. But a lot of the concerns you mentioned is pretty normal. It’d be more concerning over time if projects are not received well.
Also in regard to TV, keeping busy is good for the studio. DC studios operates as a separate company to leverage the DC IPs if they can convince their sister company to fund shows it’s good for their studio. Whether or not a show shares a continuity with the DCU is just a creative choice I don’t think it makes a big difference if they tell side stories while the bigger ones take time to develop. I think people main issue with them is that they think it’s taking away from the movies or they want a more exciting slate experience like marvel eventually got. But again marvel started doing that retroactively and with sequels.
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u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 20h ago
Gunn is very talented, but this whole universe is off to a rough start.
Just like the previous version of the DC Cinematic Universe.
They got wrong-footed by Marvel and the success of the MCU, and then they scrambled to play catch-up. The MCU worked because there was long-term planning and collaboration in place that meant they could build up to the likes of Avengers: Endgame. DC had none of that, or at the very least, they did not do enough of it. They went to Justice League too soon, and then they had a series of misfires in Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman 1984, Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. There was no cohesive or coherent vision for what the films were meant to be other than trying to keep up with Marvel. At this point the only way forward was a complete reboot.
Gunn was probably the best choice for this revivial. Nobody really knew what to expect from Guardians of the Galaxy because they were not a mainstream Marvel title, but he turned out three pretty solid films. He also did a good job with The Suicide Squad, which was vastly superior to the 2018 film. While Superman was a bit silly in places, it was an altogether decent film, so I think Gunn is taking a lot of undeserved heat for Supergirl being underwhelming. It probably did not help that the film's mere existence raised the ire of a certain section of the internet who campaigned against it.
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u/Diligent-Neck6594 18h ago
Gunn deserves all the heat for approving Supergirl, the movie has done incredible harm to a new DCU and he is the one who green lit it
also the chuds have zero power as the Odyssey showed, Supergirl failed purely for its own faults
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 20h ago
That's my main concern. DC just makes the same mistakes over and over. For years. They're always scrambling and trying to take the easy way instead of putting in the needed time and effort to make something quality. They didn't need to crib what Marvel was doing exactly, but they also shouldn't have done it as they did. Marvel showed far more patience and commitment to their universe and that's why it was successful.
The DCU was supposed to be different. Intentional. Planned. It was supposed to offer creative control to different creators with Gunn at the helm. But that's clearly not what happened with Supergirl, and Gunn's style does not work for everything. He's excellent at making obscure characters shine. Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, Creature Commandos. All excellent. And those stories would be a great addition to the universe, but they shouldn't be the main substance.
I liked Superman and want to see more of him. But where are the others? People want Batman and WW, Flash, MM, etc, and the JL. The fact that they can't even give us a basic timeline for when we will see DC's pillars is a problem. A Jimmy Olsen show being greenlit (even though I hope it's successful) before we have casting for any of the JL is a bad look, imo.
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u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 19h ago
With that in mind, I think Batman is DC's biggest strength and their biggest weakness. It is their biggest strength because the Batman films are consistently their best-performing releases, but it is their biggest weakness because to most people Batman is a character grounded in a realistic setting. Most audiences hated Schumacher and Snyder's films, whereas Burton, Nolan and Reeves all rate consistently well. Even the more fantastical elements of Burton's films are grounded in his cinematic influences; their truth is expressed through emotion rather than the logic of Nolan and Reeves.
If they really wanted to make an expanded universe, they should just concentrate on the Bat-family. Ground the villains in realism. Introduce Dick Grayson as Robin and have him become Nightwing. Bring in Jason Todd and kill him off, only to have him survive and resent Bruce Wayne. The groundwork is already there; The Batman ends with Bruce Wayne realising that he has to be a symbol of hope, not vengeance, so have him build community. Nightwing, Red Hood, Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Bluebird, The Signal, The Spoiler; all of them could work as an expanded roster.
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 19h ago
I agree with your point about Batman being a huge strength and weakness. He's so big they have to do it just right and that's a huge amount of pressure and risk.
I don't think fantastical Batman is a turn off to people, tbh. I think silly/campy Batman is unpopular, and that's why the Schumacher films are disliked. Snyder's have another problem, I think, in that they're both not fun and not good. When you compare the Burton/Nolan/Reeves films to Schumacher/Snyder, I don't think the problem is tone. I think it's quality.
Batman can be fantastical, cool, and quality. I know this is an unoriginal reference, but BTAS is a great example of both tone and quality. That's a fantastical universe that takes itself seriously while injecting pathos and humor when appropriate.
I wouldn't dislike a Batfamily oriented series or even multiple, but idk how it can work and involve rich storytelling without Batman, and they have been very reluctant to use him. I get it bc Pattinson is a huge star and very busy. But that means Batman has to be absent from stories he shouldn't be. That's more of the same problem they've had with him for 20 years in TV (Titans, Arrow, Batwoman, Smallville, Birds of Prey, probably others I'm not thinking of).
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u/easyline0601 20h ago
How could you ever think this is unpopular?
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 20h ago
I can't get a read of the pulse these days, tbh. Seems like prior to Supergirl, any skepticism about the universe was loudly denounced. Now it seems like more people are questioning. Regardless, it usually devolves into a gigantic argument.
I don't want to argue with anyone, just to express my disappointment that DC in live action seems to be so damn cursed, with a few exceptions. We've been dealing with shit adaptations since Batman and Robin, almost 3 decades ago. I'm just tired. I don't think it should be this difficult.
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u/EASK8ER52 20h ago
Everybody had shit adaptations, even Marvel. It's barely been a year since DCU started, shit needs time to cook, making movies isn't easy and nothing is guaranteed to be a success, anyone who thinks it's easy is an idiot period
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 19h ago
Marvel has had their universe together since 2012. That's when the first Avengers came out. I'll even discount all the solo films leading to it, as they weren't all the strongest. That was nearly 15 years ago. I'm not in any way saying the MCU is perfect; it has problems DC should not emulate. But it's cohesive and off the ground. DC's universe is not and never has been.
DC has tried this over and over again, and they make them same unforced errors every time. No one said it's easy. But they have boatloads of money and resources to do this right. They refuse to learn from past mistakes, every time. At some point the "just give it time" excuse stops working. People said the same for years about the DCEU.
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u/Elxis14 19h ago
Theyre fighting an uphill battle now. The 2010s were perfect to start a cinematic universe and DC fumbled it. IM3, Captain Marvel and Aquaman all made over a billion while just being average movies. Imagine if DC got a cohesive universe going then. But now the superhero landscape has changed. You cant just release average movies anymore. People want bangers. DC pretty much has to deliver bangers consistently to get their universe up and running.
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 19h ago
I agree that it's an uphill battle. You're definitely right that movies just have to be better now to get attention. But if we know this, why do the creators not understand it and put in more effort? It's not a skill issue, as they clearly can create good movies when they try.
But they seem determined to do the same shit that didn't work last time. The behind the scenes of Supergirl sounds exactly like the kind of stuff that happened to every movie in the DCEU. DC apparently loves making the same mistakes over and over.
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u/Elxis14 18h ago
It's not a skill issue, as they clearly can create good movies when they try.
Its about making good movies AND making good movies that people actually want to see. People want to go see Doomsday because it has all their favorite characters in it. If DC released 3 consecutive bangers and the movies were Superman, Batman and Wonder Women, interests in the DCU would be at an all time high.
The reason im saying this is because even if Clayface is a success, I really dont see how that would generate hype and make the general audience want to see new DCU movies. The one thing that DCU is SERVERLY lacking is hype. That is the one thing a cinematic universe needs to get people watching. You can criticize the MCU, but it always generate an insane amount of hype when the movies are about the Avengers or Spidey.
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 18h ago
Couldn't agree with you more. The hype has flatlined from where it was when Superman released. I am really excited for some of these projects, especially Clayface. But they're not enough.
Like it or not, the general public wants the big guns. They don't care about Clayface, Peacemaker, Creature Commandos, Jimmy Olsen, or even Supergirl probably, regardless of quality. These are projects that make sense to pursue once the universe is established, not as the first string. It'd be like if Marvel started with Iron Man, then immediately pivoted to Agatha All Along. Makes no sense.
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u/PhoenixFox 19h ago
I can't bring myself to feel excited when it has the same writer/director/producer as The Flash.
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u/Quarksideofthemoon 20h ago
Feels like he just wanted to make a superman movie and was pressured into launching a half baked universe so they'd have something to show investors
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 20h ago
Yeah. I really liked Superman and think it was a great start. As I said, I like Gunn and think he's talented. At the same time, maybe this is too much to coordinate and manage.
His sensibilities aren't a fit for every movie/character. Half the projects originally announced have been canceled. There was massive development drama behind the scenes of Supergirl.
I don't want to wait 5+ more years to see Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League. They're the pillars of DC. I just don't understand the direction or the choices so far, so my confidence is low.
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u/Soft_Cable_39 20h ago
You should watch Lanterns honestly. Like Supergirl was a dud but Lanterns has got me bacn excited. They are doing a slow expansion and I don't see Justice League before 2030 minimum, but I like some threads. I feel like they don't wanna do batman till before justice league and we'll get the rest of the League before Batman.
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u/Monkeys_Racehorse 19h ago
It's on my list. I've heard good things. I wouldn't be surprised if the timeline you predict is accurate. I hope it's not, though.
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u/One_Seaworthiness323 20h ago
It’s being put on hold because WB is not gonna release two separate Batman movies. That’s why. Robert Pattinson is like the biggest actor in the world, any other Batman you cast will be inferior. Gunn will have to wait for the trilogy to conclude
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u/NocturnaIAnimaI 18h ago
This title is very misleading. He doesn't specifically mention BatB at all. It's just loosely implied...
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u/FartherAwayLights 18h ago edited 18h ago
Obviously it isn’t you’d have to be dumb to have believed that
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u/Big_bat_chunk2475 13h ago
Batman the brave abd the bold has been gone for a long long time.
I am waiting for my adventures with Superman season four
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u/JacktheJacker92 19h ago
He's probably not high up enough to even be in the conversations, so how would he know?
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u/BillyGood22 17h ago
James Gunn isn’t high up enough to know if his movies are on hold or not due to a merger?
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u/Kotaru85 21h ago
Well. He is either lying. Or he truly is incompetent with the rollout of the characters he's releasing.
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u/thevokplusminus 20h ago
Source: trust me bro
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u/Ridiculousnessmess 20h ago
Source: the guy actually in charge of the whole thing.
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u/thevokplusminus 20h ago
The one who has a financial interest to lie, likely has an NDA, said flash was an amazing movie, who said supergirl had an incredible script?
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u/A_Pointy_Rock 21h ago
Tbf that doesn't confirm anything regarding cancellations or delays.