Warner Bros won a major court case on Wednesday that allows them the right to use the Superman character in both MAN OF STEEL and future film projects. This means that WB is now fast-tracking their JUSTICE LEAGUE movie.
The court case was fairly complex, but here is the skinny (Thanks to SlashFilm): In 1992 Jean Peavy, the sister of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, signed an agreement allowing Warner Bros. to have rights to the character. Years later, that agreement was called into question and one judge even ruled against it. And so it went until, finally, a judge ruled the 1992 agreement was binding and now Warner Bros. controls the rights to Superman after 2013.
If the case had gone any other way, JUSTICE LEAGUE would have been Superman free and that is a shitty JUSTICE LEAGUE. Now, the search for writers and directors is going to move into overdrive, which is not a good thing. Sure, I would love to have a world where both THE AVENGERS 2 and JUSTICE LEAGUE are released in the same year, but I would rather have Warner Bros and DC take their time and develop the team in the same way Marvel did. At this point you have an untested MAN OF STEEL opening next year and that is it. All other members of the team would either need to be introduced or rebooted in the movie. That would mean we wouldn’t see the new Batman or Green Lantern until after 2015.
DC’s universe is pretty mediocre in movie terms compared to Marvel. There just have not been as many successes that can easily be rolled into this new team. Let MAN OF STEEL open, then work hard on planning out the big screen debuts of these other heroes before making JUSTICE LEAGUE.
I doubt they will take that advice. Expect to see JUSTICE LEAGUE in theaters in two years. We will report as soon as writers and directors are announced.
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