Even in a year where there were zero Marvel movies and two DCEU films in Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984, Warner Bros. still trails by a wide margin. But there are steps being taken to rectify that, as seen in a new piece by New York Times, in which DC Films chief Walter Hamada reveals that starting in 2022 there will be four DC Comics movies per year going forward.
So what will those movies be? Well, two we know for sure. Matt Reeves’ The Batman arrives on March 4th 2022, followed by The Flash on November 4th. Another is likely to be Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam film, since we know that was pushed to 2022 already. The fourth? Maybe Shazam 2 gets moved up to be closer to Black Adam which it is very closely tied to?
One issue the DCEU has that Marvel doesn’t, is that they’re introducing multiple versions of characters. We’ve now seen a couple of Jokers in Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix, and eventually there will be multiple Dark Knights running around with Robert Pattinson, Ben Affleck, and even Michael Keaton who is returning for The Flash. So what do you do with that?
The plan is to introduce the Multiverse and the concepts of Earth-1, which is the normal world with the characters we’re used to, and Earth-2 where alternate versions exist. And there are an infinite number of Earths with an infinite number of variations.
“I don’t think anyone else has ever attempted this,” Hamada said. “But audiences are sophisticated enough to understand it. If we make good movies, they will go with it.”
To make all the storylines work, DC Films will introduce movie audiences to the concept of a comic known as the multiverse: parallel worlds where different versions of the same character exist simultaneously. Coming up, for instance, Warner Bros. will have two different film sagas involving Batman — played by two different actors — running at the same time.
The answer is the multiverse. Boiled down, it means that some characters (Wonder Woman as portrayed by Ms. Gadot, for instance) will continue their adventures on Earth 1, while new incarnations (Mr. Pattinson as “The Batman”) will populate Earth 2.
The Multiverse has been a key component of DC Comics for decades, and has been used to tell all sorts of universe-altering stories. Yes, Marvel Studios is sorta doing the same thing with triple the Peter Parkers in Spider-Man 3, but I don’t think they’ll be integrated on a long-term basis the way DC will do with their characters.
