A LOT of chips were riding on the success of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. For some reason it was built up to be the defining example of the modern blockbuster at Warner Bros. and it’s $700M box office sales have caused some heads to roll. It’s viewed as a disappointment by the shareholders, which is ludicrous.
You think every film will pull $1 billion, especially in March? After over seventeen of the best minutes were published earlier? After the title fight was resolved in the trailer? Using the extremely divisive Man of Steel as your jumping off point? Guys, you’re lucky you got what you got.
Similarly to Sony a few years back, Warner Bros (which owns DC) cannot see the error of their ways. They’ve doubled down on their franchise blockbusters Lego (admittedly awesome), Harry Potter (cautiously optimistic) and DC (keen to see a sans-Snyder version). More money and manpower is going into making these films great, but with a quarter of a billion before advertising pouring into BvS, wasn’t that the problem?
Anyway, this isn’t a BvS thinkpiece. There’s enough of those in the world.
Warner Bros. has announced they will be scaling down original content outside of their favourite half a dozen directors, which include Christopher Nolan and Clint Eastwood. This is part of the reallocation of manpower and the disappointment of Pan, Jupiter Ascending and more. As such, the highly-anticipated live-action Death Note has been shimmied over to Netflix. Fantastic news.
The other school of thought is Warner is trying to mimic Disney’s multi-tiered franchise approach. Only it’s not franchises. Disney owns it’s live action division, Animation, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel. And within all of those include Star Wars, Princesses, Toy Story, Incredibles, Iron Man, Avengers and Doctor Strange franchises. So if Warner want to make that happen, they need to begin purchasing beloved but buyable companies rather than channeling more resources into three finite movie series.
Either way, Netflix should do good on a globally-marketable and popular series in Death Note.
