You ever wanted to see the corporate marketing equivalent of a rope-a-dope? Well, here it is. After a decidedly tame Comic Con this year in which all we really got was a costume reveal for Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, more details on the new look for Ant-Man and footage for WB and Marvel’s upcoming films, WB is taking off the kiddie gloves. It’s time for them to present themselves as contenders for Marvel’s crown.
First up is news that Warner Bros. is moving up the release date for Zack Snyder’s Man Of Steel follow up, Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Instead of trying to compete with Captain America 3, which was schedule for the same release date of May 6, 2016, WB has decided to back down by moving their film up to March 25, 2016.
Now, this is where the smarts come in. See, WB knew that comic book news sites and blogs all over the internet would be crying that WB has blinked in the game of chicken between the two companies so they went ahead and followed up by announcing nine release dates for upcoming DC films. Yeah, nine. That takes us to 2020 with two films a year from 2017 onwards.
The dates are as follows, so mark your calendars now:
- Aug. 5, 2016: Untitled DC Film
- June 23, 2017: Untitled DC Film
- Nov. 17, 2017: Untitled DC Film
- March 23, 2018: Untitled DC Film
- July 27, 2018: Untitled DC Film
- April 5, 2019: Untitled DC Film
- June 14, 2019: Untitled DC Film
- April 3, 2020: Untitled DC Film
- June 19, 2020: Untitled DC Film
Of course, there’s no word as to what these films will be, but I would hope you could cross at least three off as being Wonder Woman and Batman solo films and the eventual Justice League film. There’s also that Shazam film The Rock keeps talking about which could take us to four. Man Of Steel 2? A Green Lantern reboot? Whatever happened to that Justice League Dark film Guillermo Del Toro was putting together? Just don’t expect an Arrow or The Flash film as Geoff Johns has some dire news for you.
Either way, get ready to be going to the cinemas a lot in the coming years as combining this with Marvel’s current slate of release dates, we’re looking at at least four comic book films a year between the two companies – not counting Sony or Fox. Yeesh. And they’re talking about superhero fatigue now.
Now, if we only knew what some of these films are…
