Earlier this week Warner Bros. announced that it was bringing forward the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to March 25th 2016, shifting the DC superhero team-up out of direct competition with Marvel’s Captain America 3 on May 6th of that year. Of course, this led Marvel fans to declare victory in the showdown between the two comic giants, and now Warner’s president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman has spoken about the decision during an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“The reality now is there really isn’t a bad week to open a movie. If you look at the summer box office this year, you can see that there were so many movies, one after the other. You can start with Spider-Man, two weeks later Godzilla, and then Maleficent, and then Edge of Tomorrow, and then Jump Street and Transformers. And the one thing they all had in common, not one of them did over $250 million. We’ll be the first one up [in 2016], which is very important, and we’ll have six weeks before Captain America comes in.”
Smart business decision then, but why did Warner Bros. aim for Marvel’s date in the first place? According to Fellman, “In terms of going back and reviewing the situation, it looked to us—and maybe our reconnaissance wasn’t great—that [Marvel] were not going to have a movie [ready] on that date. Just that they held onto it and they might not be able to deliver. But they took another position.”
Meanwhile, accompanying the release date switch for Dawn of Justice was the news that Warner Bros. has finally laid the groundwork for a DC Cinematic Universe, setting release dates for nine DC movies between 2016 and 2020. Fellman indicated that an announcement on some of the titles will be made this month, and that could include a quick follow-up to Batman v Superman with the long-awaited Justice League: “While it hasn’t been officially announced, I think it’s a pretty good bet.”
What movies would you like to see Warner Bros. announcing, and should they jump straight in to Justice League?
Originally published August 8, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
