Following the monumental success of Wonder Woman, as both a commercial product and culturally relevant piece of pop culture earlier this year, parent studio Warner Bros. and DC may have finally figured out how to actually compete against direct rival Disney/Marvel: Easing up on that whole “shared universe” thing.
On Friday, Vulture revealed that the quasi-stand-alone film Wonder Woman proved the virtue of an independent superhero. Although Wonder Woman was set in the “DCEU” and Batman/Bruce Wayne had a bit part, it was minuscule to the story.
“Our intention, certainly, moving forward is using the continuity to help make sure nothing is diverging in a way that doesn’t make sense, but there’s no insistence upon an overall storyline or interconnectivity in that universe,” says DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson. “Moving forward, you’ll see the DC movie universe being a universe, but one that comes from the heart of the filmmaker who’s creating them.”
Rest assured, this is not the end of the “DC Extended Universe,” the interconnected series that began with Man of Steel in 2013 and will continue this November in Justice League. It’s just that DC’s movies, especially in solo outings like 2018’s Aquaman, will no longer bog themselves down in those all-important connections to the larger tapestry. In fact, with films like that solo Joker movie from Todd Phillips (War Dogs), DC will have a spin-off label (a name is “coming soon-ish,” according to that Vulture piece) to denote movies that aren’t part of the “DCEU.”
It may seem too obvious, but in 2017, one of the greatest revelations for a film studio is to let those superhero movies just be movies. Who knew?
Justice League will be released on November 17.
