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TOLDJA! Warner Bros Creates DC Entertainment
3RD UPDATE: Paul Levitz To Transition Out As Warner Bros Restructures DC Comics
BREAKING NEWS: I've learned that the announcement may be made as soon as later today. The restructuring of the stand-alone DC Comics business is being described to me as Warner Bros Pictures Group president Jeff Robinov's first priority since having his contract re-upped by Time Warner. I know what everybody is thinking: that this move is in response to the announcement August 31st that Disney is buying Marvel. You can think that, but you would be wrong. This change has been in the works quietly for two years ever since Robinov moved into the top slot. "It was Jeff's idea to have DC Comics reporting to him, and DC will be his direct responsibility with Diane Nelson," an insider confided to me. I've also learned that Robinov for months has quietly gone to producers like Chuck Roven and Joel Silver and Akiva Goldman and "called back" all their high profile DC titles in development like The Flash and Wonder Woman. Not only was that shocking to the producers, but even more so when they found out this was part of Robinov's strategy to severely limit the number of gross participants on the projects. Because the producers were told that they may get the titles back to develop, but with far less rich deals. "Jeff always wanted some kind of oversight of DC, and now he wants Warner's to hold onto ownership," my insider explains. (My understanding is that Joel Silver, who is buddies with Robinov, was allowed to continue bringing low profile The Losers to the big screen under his Dark Castle banner. But Silver's 10 years of developing Wonder Woman is history now.)
I'm told that Robinov went to management as soon as he took over as president of Warner Bros Pictures Group in January 2007 with a proposal to take over DC Comics. It's taken this long to get it done. Paul Levitz, DC Comics president and publisher, will stay with the company.
UPDATE: *But DC Comics insiders are now telling me that Levitz told senior staff this morning he will "transition out" after a new publisher is sought and found. He chose to leave after 35 years at the comic book company. Warner Bros gave him an option to stay but in a different capacity. "He was a constructive, positive partner in the restructure," a source advises me. But his reporting structure was going to change. (Previously, he'd reported to Alan Horn. One insider told me Levitz's conversation with senior staff this morning went like this, "Don't worry. No one should sweat right now. It's all going to be fine."*
Put in charge and reporting directly to Robinov will be Nelson, the brilliant marketer who beginning in 2000 oversaw the management of the Harry Potter franchise across all platforms and represented the studio's interests with author JK Rowling. The plan is to have her do the same with DC Comics biz. (Kudos to the website BleedingCool.com, which on August 25th first tipped that Nelson might "take on more new projects at the media empire -- including DC Comics".)
Nelson has served as President of Warner Premiere the studio-based production company which develops and produces direct-to-consumer DVD and short-form digital programming content since its founding in August 2006. She's already well familiar with DC Comics since it has titles already in development and production and release with Warner Premiere. Prior to that, Nelson served as EVP of Global Brand Management at Warner Bros Entertainment since May 2004, with the primary responsibility of working cross-divisionally and throughout Time Warner to maximize and optimize all the various windows and outlets available to the Studio’s signature franchises, brands and event properties on a global basis. And, before that, Nelson was EVP of Domestic Marketing for Warner Bros Pictures.
Problems have plagued the DC Comics-Warner Bros relationship. For instance, the the film division didn't nail down the legal rights to Watchmen adequately, with mogul after mogul shaking their heads in disbelief how Warner Bros could even have started filming the graphic novel with 20th Century Fox still laying claim to the pic. Cutting Fox in at the last minute with Paramount already an overseas played wrought havoc with Warner Bros' economics on the movie. But the biggest failure has been to leave the most valuable DC Comics characters in movie development limbo by chaotically starting and stopping work on scripts for the high profile live action pics. Of Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Justice League, only Batman has an ongoing live action franchise. And now that director Chris Nolan is working on back-to-back pics, who knows when the threequel will get a start date. Most recently, it appears that Warner Bros and DC Comics are getting their act together. Jonah Hex has wrapped, and Green Lantern starts shooting in the spring. That's the same time period that Human Target debuts on Fox. There's also been some very successful development by DC Comics SVP of Creative Affairs Gregory Noveck. Meanwhile, Marvel is exploiting the hell out of its characters with an ultra-ambitious and self-financed (except for Spider-Man at Sony and X-men at Fox) film slate.
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Wow. WB remembers they own DC. Maybe a good Wonder Woman project can come out of this.
Human Target and The Losers rock.
shrewd move, and very impressive. he’s a hands-on guy, and many of the gross player deals have gotten out of hand (will be interesting to see the eventual numbers at sony for 2012 – though at least they’re not a-holes). good on ya, jeff.
what’s shrewd about looking up from your own navel long enough to realize your company owns the rights to some of the biggest pop culture icons in the world? “hands on” what does that even mean? is jeff robinov posting comments about himself? this is another ham-fisted corporate attempt to create “synergy” and blah, blah, blah. bottom line: they fired the comic guy and replaced him with some woman responsible for the success of the harry potter franchise who isn’t named j.k. rowling, i.e. some woman who is tangentially responsible for the success of the harry potter franchise (and that’s being generous). that should give you some idea about where this “move” is going.
Well, SOMETHING had to be done…Warner’s has been NOTORIOUS for A)putting these things in developement hell, and B) not having a clue about their own DC properties- endless attempts to “reboot” Superman are a waste of time when you own literally THOUSANDS of characters- it’s like obsessing on Fantastic Four when Iron Man, Blade, and the X-Men are JUST SITTING THERE. To be fair, Warners DOES seem to have wised up already- taking obscure characters like Jonah Hex, The Losers, and The Human Target and giving them a shot because of their “crossover potential” is a smart gamble, and one that could really open the floodgates- if they stop thinking “superheroes” and start thinking “action/adventure”, their audience could expand dramatically…
This is smart move,even if it ultimately underscores several grim realities of show business. The first is that originality and inspiration are almost over as valued qualities.It costs too much to break through the clutter and adhd-addled attention span of the audience.Only movies with some pre-awareness will be made and marketed, and over the last few years we have become conditioned to accepting this, e.g. TRANSFORMERS 2, STARTRECK, WOLVERINE.
Secondly, through Jeff is pulling back some of the most onerous deals from studio producers, this only serves to remind us that only that most rare creature–a studio producer–can get a deal of any value. The rest are picking over scraps and are encouraged to leave their originality at home.
This is the way of the world right now. It isn’t the end of the world. But it may be the end of the movie business we grew up in.
No matter what, if you want to break into “pop culture” you have to start somewhere. Look at some of the titles they’re working on… Jonah Hex? Who’s that? Some character some comic writer came up with.
It still starts from some regular person getting into the biz and coming up with an idea (or vice-versa).
I would be delighted to see another superman movie. One unlike any other superman movie we seen so far. Lex luthor we have seen dozen of times, but we yet to see any other villians such as, dark side or doomsday. I’m not speaking of cartoon doomsday, I’m talking about real doomsday. Take Spiderman for example, in his movies it does not fight the same villian again and again, there are different ones. That would be a good quality for Superman. If you see the same thing over and over it will get boring, and Superman movies are anything but boring. In closing I would like to leave you with this quote, “If you make it, people will see it”
Your biggest fan,
Danny D. Blair Jr.
Hey Nikki,
You should look up the recent news bites about the creative restructuring with the DC properties, where Rubinov forced three high-profile DC Comics creators onto each of the bigger DC tentpoles in development. This included Geoff Johns (Richard “Superman” Donner’s protege), Marv Wolfman and Grant Morrison, who will now be co-writing and co-producing the larger films, which apparently pissed off a number of attached talent agents, managers and producers.
Geoff Johns had moved from The Donners’ Company to becoming one of DC Comics’ leading creative editors and writers, successfully relaunching titles like Green Lantern and The Flash. He said a few years back that Warner would inevitably have to revise their approach to comic book adaptation to the Marvel Studios process simply because they would end up having no other choice.
All you have to do is look what a mess the 10+ year history of the non-existent Wonder Woman movie is, where they’ve spent who knows how many millions and penned a number of gone-nowhere scripts… all for nothing. This is only DC’s 3rd biggest recognizable superhero intellectual property, that still has a noticable presence in merchandising and yet hasn’t been touched since a TV show 30+ years ago.
The notable franchises to fall under Rubinov’s recent “quiet” restructuring, and now most likely to be a priority, include THE FLASH, SHAZAM! and TEEN TITANS, the latter of which was due to feature Robin and was being developed – prior to the restructuring – by the same man who nearly destroyed the entire genre back in the 1990’s… Akiva Goldsman. This is the same guy who last introduced Robin through the seminal work, BATMAN & ROBIN. Yeesh. It’s fascinating to see that Warner needed to go through this much red tape to start pulling away from bad and repetitious habits.
DC Comics is a pantheon of heros, and at the top are Superman and Batman. DC Comics is losing ownership of Superman in 2013, less that three years from now. If Robinov considers DC Comics to be an important corporate asset he needs to address the purchase of Superman.
As it stands now issue 1 of Superman and the first two weeks of the Superman daily comic strip are partly owned by the families of the creators. All of the key intellectual properties are defined in these two sources. In the year 2013 these properties become wholly owned by the children of Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster. DC and Warner Brothers will no longer be able to utilize Superman without a contract from these families.
From a creator’s rights point of view it’s easy to feel satisfaction at these families finally controlling Superman since their fathers were under-compensated their entire lives for creating a cultural icon. Both of these men should have been compensated millions of dollars. Instead they were fired from DC Comics when they asked for more money, and late in life they received $20,000 a year in compensation. If there’s a karmic screwing coming DC and Warner Brothers have earned it.
It’s time for WB to open it’s checkbook and buy Superman from the Seigels and Shusters. This will likely cost hundreds of millions, but DC Comics entire lore in anchored in Superman’s back story. Superman is the flagship character. Superman is a billion dollar corporate asset and it’s time to write a check to the families that reflects this reality.
Somewhere Greg Silverman is weeping.
Props to you Nikki for giving credit to bleedingcool.com, they are the deadline.com of comics.
So is Noveck in or out? And Levitz is going to be reporting to Nelson now? It’s funny that nobody at Warner Bros. can explain WHY so many potential DC franchises have languished for the last 15 years, but this new strategy is interesting: blame the producers.
I am seriously impressed. This could be a major play on Robinov’s part to silence those who think he is too ‘green’ to replace Horn. It’s a ballsy move and not one that would have gone down very well on the producer heavy lot. So kudos for that at least.
But what does it really change? The original source material still needs to be ‘cracked’ to make it big franchise material. Wonder Woman for example has great potential but its going to take a filmmaking team with a passion and a fresh take on the character to bring the property to the big screen.
And I’m not sure how taking a film away from it’s original producers gets us any closer to that goal. Joel Silver may not have managed to bring Wonder Woman or Swamp Thing to the screen in over a decade but does a potentially ‘Silver-less’ production really stand a better chance?
But I’ll eat my hat and the coat that came with it if this means that DC Comics will change the way they do business on a daily basis however.
Hell, any move that means Jon Peters is making less films (Superman ‘reboot’ + Sandman off the top of my head) should be supported by all.
Amen!
How is approving new stationary a ballsy move? They already owned the company. He just fired the one guy who knew what the hell he was doing. It’s going to take more than reneging on a few of your Hollywood friends’sweetheart deals to right this sinking ship.
DC Comics is a pantheon of heros, and at the top are Superman and Batman. DC Comics is losing ownership of Superman in 2013, less that three years from now. If Robinov considers DC Comics to be an important corporate asset he needs to address the purchase of Superman.
As it stands now issue 1 of Superman and the first two weeks of the Superman daily comic strip are partly owned by the families of the creators. All of the key intellectual properties are defined in these two sources. In the year 2013 these properties become wholly owned by the children of Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster. DC and Warner Brothers will no longer be able to utilize Superman without a contract from these families.
From a creator’s rights point of view it’s easy to feel satisfaction at these families finally controlling Superman since their fathers were under-compensated their entire lives for creating a cultural icon. Both of these men should have been compensated millions of dollars. Instead they were fired from DC Comics when they asked for more money, and late in life they received $20,000 a year in compensation. If there’s a karmic screwing coming DC and Warner Brothers have earned it.
It’s time for WB to open it’s checkbook and buy Superman from the Seigels and Shusters. This will likely cost hundreds of millions, but DC Comics entire lore is anchored in Superman’s back story. Superman is the flagship character. Superman is a billion dollar corporate asset and it’s time to write a check to the families that reflects this reality.
The Warner Premiere animated DVD movies seem to be popular with fans, and are developed and produced with relative efficiency. I mean you don’t hear about them wasting $65 million before shooting a frame of film like the parent company did on Superman Returns.
Now shooting live action is different than animation, because there’s a truckload more ego and money involved, but I hope they can use that efficiency get some of these properties out of development hell.
We’ll have to watch and see where this goes, but I wish them good luck, they’re going to need it when it comes to straightening out the development mess.
About time that WB did something or other. DC has many of the most iconic comic characters ever created, and WB has done nothing but mishandle what should have been a very lucrative stable of films.
Too bad that it took Marvel’s success and the legal mess over the Watchmen to drive the point through – if that’s really what has happened, since the actual proof will still be in future pudding.
Let’s see what they do with the whole Superman legal mess, for example. Or, if they can get someone to helm some of these characters that will be able to strike the right balance between the print material and film, as really only Nolan has managed to do recently.
Sounds very positive- Diane Nelson has a great reputation and track record.
I love irony.
I sincerely hope that Ms. Nelson doesn’t restructure the LA office. Gregory Noveck and Will Hackner are awesome in every way and have been doing an amazing job even when forced to deal with Warners bullshit and Robinov’s long-standing uncertainty on what the studio wants to do with the DC titles.
Why stop there? There are a lot of hard-working people in the New York office who could potentially lose their jobs as well to any potential restructuring. I agree that Noveck does a fine job (though I’m not sure who Hackner is; does he report to Ivan Cohen?), and it *would* be a crime to lose him, but there are LOTS of other people who do “an amazing job” and are worried about unemployment in these uncertain times.
Hopefully now we will see some better made movies, DC (with the exception of the recent batman movies) has been severely lacking on the big screen. I would love to see a flash, green lantern and even mabey a justice league movie done the right way this time. Plus I think we are about 10 years overdue for a completely re-done superman.
It’s about time DC took control of their properties. Now the DC second stringers can get movies and surprise everyone the way Iron Man did, right?
Somewhere Steve Ross is smiling.
It’s pathetic that the studios chase comic books at the expense of original material. Our greatest resource is our talent. Writers, director, actors and producers struggle and sacrifice everything to bring their ideas to market. Their work sits idle on the desks of agents and producers, unread.
I spent a couple of decades as a literary agent in the entertainment industry. I’ve seen it all. Alan Horn has too. He was mentored by the great Norman Lear and helped shepherd tons of original material. He generated billions of dollars in revenues for studios and networks and created a lasting legacy.
Somewhere in the great city of Los Angeles are scripts, original scripts, that are worth billions of dollars and they sit wasted by expedience and foolishness and laziness.
Maybe they’ll stop wasting our money and put out decent stuff now?
with the exception of the latest batman game, every superhero game int he past 5 yrs has been utter bullshit…
Looks like WB is on the right track with DC after nearly shooting themselves in the proverbial feet over the Watchmen snafu.
beautiful blonde
Finally, after years of getting their ass handed to them DC is stepping up and making big moves! HOORAY!
Jimmy, I agree. God forbid a comic book company just be a comic book company, answerable to no one but their readers.
WB is crazy. Comic book heroes are big at the theater now, who knows how long that will last. They are effectively most likely missing the boat…again. Stupid. They should have had a new Superman on screens this year starring Brandon Routh. He is perfect for the role now even more than in 2006.
perfect – just what DC needed. A Marketing person running a comic book company. Jesus – Don’t expect the movies to get better over there.
Paul Levitz is not leaving DC Comics he is going to be a consultant for the transition then he will return to writing Adventure comics once all is said and done. but he will remain in a consultant capacity
Let’s just hope this is the first step in pulling their collective heads from their asses. Come on, WB, you’re a studio, make some movies, tell me some stories !!
These idiots have no clue what the hell they’re doing over at DC/WB. Putting a person who knows about children’s books in charge of action/adventure franchises like Batman and Green Lantern is ridiculous. I think Ms. Nelson aim now will be to sell to the target demographic of male teenagers and pre-teens much like what Disney is strategizing with Marvel. But they still have to get the rights to Superman sorted with the Siegels lawsuit after the Watchmen fiasco and even after THAT fact, the movie was a bomb at the box office! She’s got her hands full and honestly I don’t think there’s any hope for DC except to pray the next Batman film gets off the ground with good intentions.
Wonder Woman Movie? Probably Not Gonna Happen
It’s really sad that Wonder Woman has not been made yet. The only thing I blame for this is the utter lack of respect and confidence in Hollywood for a woman to carry a major movie role and make it work artistically and financially. The only thing holding this project back is that Hollywood is run by a lot of old farts that still adhere to a macho image of movies, and don’t really want to see woman take their place in superhero movie history.
Look at it this way: Superman movie came out in 1978, Batman came out what in the early 40’s or something, (as a serial movie), and of course all the later incarnations, but Wonder Woman, let’s just put her on a shelf and let her stagnate. So very sad. Especially since the movie should not be that hard to make. The Lynda Carter TV version did it perfectly.
Wonder Woman is a comic character whose origin story must be followed to the letter. How else has the character survived since 1941 or 42, in a predominately male drive comic field? The Wonder Woman TV show included all elements of the rich origin story without deviating from any of the source material and it hit with mainstream. The story of this character is very important. Just as important as Superman’s story is. No one EVER messes with Superman or Batman’s story and origin, but somehow people (writers/directors) feel they must somehow bring the female hero into the new age (sex sells!). This just is not right. Portray Wonder Woman based on the George Perez plot for the revamped comic origin of 1987. It had it all; caveman days, greek gods, beautiful amazons, clash of titans type weapons, and even touched on spousal abuse.
I really don’t see a really good Wonder Woman movie ever being made. My suggestion is to let a woman direct and write the movie. This way it will probably stay much closer to the version that Dr. Moulton originally had in mind. It will be so shameful if a movie is made that will tarnish his image and the excellent work Ms. Lynda Carter did in the TV Show. If Hollywood is going to make this movie, treat it with the respect you give Superman and Batman by following their exact storylines. How hard can that be?