At the press junket for Superman Returns, DC Comics President Paul Levitz updated Superhero Hype! on some of the movie projects in the works based on DC Comics properties, as well as offering some thoughts about how they’ve developed.
On how Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman movie is developing:
“It’s coming along. Supposedly, Joss is turning a script in any moment now. I can’t emphasize enough how normal it is for these projects to take forever. The gap between signing the project for Superman 1 and the film coming out was six years. The gap between signing the contract that led to the first Tim Burton Batman movie was nine and a half years. The gap between the last, if you will, cycle of Batman films and Batman Begins was nine years I think. It’s been about nine or 10 years since we got the Superman film rights back to Warner Brothers before we got this one going. An it’s not just us. For whatever reason, Spider-Man was the worst mess we’d ever seen in terms of the business maneuvers it took to get it done. By their nature, these are big and complex things to put together. You don’t build them fast.”
On Joel Silver being a strange choice for a movie about female empowerment:
“I think Joel has a great sensibility for action movies. He’s one of the extraordinary marketers of the movie business, and part of what you want to do in any film like our stuff is you want a producer who can bring a real marketing sensibility to it. Joel loves comics. He’s been a passionate advocate of comic book projects that I’m aware of for over 20 years, since he was signed on for Watchmen in the mid ’80s, so I think it comes out of his desire to do it.”
On the state and history of the Watchmen movie:
“Warners is looking at Watchmen right now. I believe they are looking for a director at the moment. I negotiated the Watchmen film deal when the third issue of the maxi-series was coming out in 1985 or 1986. It’s been through Fox, Universal, Paramount so far and now it’s at Warners. God knows. I think it’s an extraordinary difficult property to do right as a film. It is a creative property that is very specifically designed for the medium in which it is published. I think it’s a real challenge to break out and do it. I think they had a very interesting script and certainly Paul Greengrass is a great director, so I had some hope for the Paramount one. I hope Warner will be able to put something great around it.”
On the fate of the Aquaman TV series:
“Yeah, we did a TV pilot, but it didn’t get picked up. I think a lot of it was that it was started for the WB, and in the combination of the WB and UPN this year a number of slots got dropped radically, so I think it got hard to get anything on that year.” (Levitz added that it could get picked up later.)
On whether there’s a chance of them really doing an Aquaman movie (like the fake one seen on HBO’s “Entourage”):
“We’ve heard a couple of pitches about it in the last few years, but none of them have gotten a studio excited. I think the Entourage thing is just fun.”
On other DC characters being considered for movies:
“There’s a long list under development and announced things that are being worked on include: Flash with David Goyer writing, Shazam and Pete Segal is directing that for New Line. We have another Batman coming of course. New Line is developing some of our newer properties, Y the Last Man and The Exterminators, and Warner Brothers has a raft of other ones under the roof. A lot of stuff’s going on.”
All he would say about the Batman sequel:
“It’s going to be really good.”
The next DC Comics movie Superman Returns opens on June 28. Keep tuned to Superhero Hype! for more on all of these projects.
Source: Heather Newgen
