Jackskeleton

Once you have a universe established, you can pick and choose what you want in it. But come on, this is just stupid unless they're going to go for a Multi-cinema-verse where WB Arrow and Flash are their own universe, Black Adam is part of Cimena Earth-3 and then you have the Batman vs. Superman universe that is Earth-1, the most depressing place ever.



but hey, I'm sure The Rock would have made a better Mister Mind.

PhantomStranger

It tells me they will be going after a completely different demo than the main DC universe films. I would guess now this will be an extremely kid-oriented movie.

fujishig

If that's the case, I'm fine with it. A Fawcett-era Shazam movie for the kids seems good. Then when we get the Crisis movie he can be shocked at how dark the Man of Steel is...

The Valeyard

^ And then he snaps his neck. Perfect!

Solid Snake

Talking about Miracle Man or whatever.

Soooo that HC that Marvel released...that's Moore's run? Or what? It says the original writer or whatever...that seems like a Moore thing to do.

The Valeyard

Yes. When Marvel got the rights to Marvel/Miracleman, Alan Moore made it very clear that he did not want to be credited in any way, shape or form. So the reprints of Issues #1 - 16 will be credited as "The Original Writer."

Neil Gaiman will keep his credit from #17 onward.

Just heard that Marvel is releasing a Miracleman Annual in December with the first new Miracleman work since the 90s (not counting McFarlane's revival attempt in Hellspawn).

Solid Snake

I have wanted to read Moore's run since I read about it in Wizard magazine. I've never read anything with him. But when I read about it in there...I've wanted to read it ever since. Sounded amazing. Hearing about it as a kid it sounded fucking groundbreaking. I need to bite on that cuz I think that's the one thing I've wanted to read the most out of anything. And until Marvel released it...I thought I'd never read it under normal conditions aside from buying it off eBay or whatever. At massive prices.

taffer

We know the Arrow/Flash TV series are their own separate universe too. Maybe a Crisis movie will happen where the Arrow/Flash universe, the Shazam universe, and the Justice League universe all meet.

Flash pilot episode spoilers

fujishig

There is no way they could ever do Crisis properly. At the most they'd do some kind of cameo with a wink and a nod (hey, their Superman looks like our Atom!). Crisis (and supposedly the new 52) was supposed to streamline the universe, anyway.

The Valeyard

DC is planning on doing some type of New52 Crisis next year to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Anti-Monitor has already popped up at the end of Forever Evil and currently hovering around Justice League. The last Monitor is currently appearing in The Multiversity. Futures End hints about an upcoming war between the Earths.

Josh-da-man

Too bad. Black Adam could the DC movie universe's version of Loki.

I'm not really liking a lot of the decisions I'm reading about: Rushing into a Justice League movie, replacing Martian Manhunter with Cyborg, yadda yadda yadda. Seems like they're just rushing into things without any kind of a long-term plan and they're just flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks.

Marvel has already shown them how to run a Cinematic universe, and DC/WB could learn a lot from both their hits and misses. Go into this with a long-term plan, course-correct when you have to, but think big and execute it.

Maybe they do have some kind of big picture in mind, but a lot of this seems like they're just stumbling around blind.

fujishig

It may be that the pain of having to integrate the rest of the shared universe is something that directors or writers don't want to deal with when creating their films. I don't know what the plot of this movie is, but especially for superheroes, it works better to have them self-contained, at least at first, as the only or first superhero in their world. Otherwise you get the questions of "where was Superman and the Justice League when Black Adam was tearing up the street" and "why is it so awesome to people that Shazam is around when they already have Superman in this world" and stuff like that.

I'm not saying that that's the approach they have to or should take, but it's an approach that can work as well, because the alternative is that this becomes Batman featuring Shazam just like what was once going to be MoS 2. And if they really want a Society of Super Villains in the JL verse, it isn't that hard to get a Felix Faust or whatever to pull Black Adam/the Rock from a parallel world.

I would love a Miracleman adaptation, though. That for sure would have to be in it's own universe.

Tom Creo

Debacle? Lol let's wait till the flick comes out.

PhantomStranger

Almost every comic book ever published is available in digital format via torrents. Unless it is super rare or obscure, it's not hard to find complete runs.

DthRdrX

The thing that really bothers me is that Marvel was able to coordinate a shared universe while working between Paramount, Universal and then Disney. I can't imagine the pushing the hoops they had to do to make things work the way they wanted.

WB owns all the damn DC material, with no outside problems, and is still clueless. People at the top really need to be fired for being morons.

Jackskeleton

I miss the old Geoff Johns that use to write good stories and not let nostalgia eat into his brain.

Obi-Wanma

Paramount and Universal didn't have any creative input in the films, they were just the distributors. Even as part of Disney now, by all accounts they pretty much let Marvel Studios run itself.

DthRdrX

That's true, but that is still a credit to Marvel for maintaining their control. WB on the other hand wouldn't even have to worry about it. They have been clueless about DC since Iron Man came out.

They don't seem like they will give creative control to one person or group. Just amazing to me how great the DCU was and they can't replicate it on screen. They are still doing the same celeb casting they used for Batman and Robin ... get big names and throw them into important roles.

Solid Snake

Technically that worked out for Marvel too. Nolan's casting worked too. There's nothing wrong with casting big names. As long as they work out.

Obi-Wanma

Marvel hasn't really cast any big names (at least not for lead roles) apart from RDJ, and at the time they cast him, he was anything but a reliable name at the box office. As much as RDJ is responsible for making the Marvel Universe work, Marvel is also responsible for making RDJ a household name again.

Now of course you've also got names like Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Redford, etc.

But in addition to mostly being supporting roles, those are names that either totally made sense or are just really great actors. None of it can really be labeled as "stunt casting".

taffer

Norton was their original choice for Hulk.

Obi-Wanma

True enough, and that was something that I also considered after I posted. He's a guy that despite having a name, isn't really reliable at the box office either. Now this is very early MCU, and I think they were probably trying to repeat the RDJ experiment, casting a talented, recognizable actor that maybe had a bit of a bad reputation in the business and who they could get for a reasonable price in the lead.

Clearly it didn't work as well that time, and they realized that working with him wasn't worth the trouble, and once they had their own brand and hooked people on the MCU, they realized they didn't really need to cast recognizable leads anymore.

taffer

Modern MCU has had some fairly big names as well.

Chris Pratt has been popular since Parks and Rec.
Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd in Ant-Man

Obi-Wanma

Chris Pratt is not a big name. Being a popular character on an ensemble sitcom is a world of difference from leading a $200+ million space opera. Casting him in the lead of a property no one's ever heard of was a huge risk.

Michael Douglas is a supporting character and fits into what I talked about in the first post on this subject (though you may have missed my stealth edit where I went back and threw that in)

Paul Rudd is a name, but not a name probably anyone else would choose to lead a superhero movie. He fits what they're going for though, which is what is most important. I think the Marvel critera for hiring lead actors goes something like this: 1. Does he fit what we want? 2. Will he sign a long term deal? 3. Will he take what we're willing to pay him? The name is at best a minor consideration. So not stunt casting in any way.

Obi-Wanma

All that said though, I personally think it's too early to tell if the DCCU is doing stunt casting either. Most of their leads aren't huge names either, and of the names that have been cast, we haven't seen how most of them are going to work out.

I haven't seen anything that makes me scream "Batman and Robin" yet.