WittyUsername

Does Japan even care about Hollywood movies at this point? It was basically the one country that The Way of Water flopped in. In any case, Hollywood adaptations of Japanese IP’s don’t have the best track record over there.

I almost would’ve thought WB would’ve moved away from Clint Eastwood after Zaslav’s whole “show business” lecture from last year.

For my two cents, I don’t see any reason why this would get worse reception than the typical Illumination film. Illumination in general has a reputation for playing things incredibly safe, with modestly budgeted movies that have simple premises, basic kid’s movie humor and whatever celebrity voices they can get their hands on. If anything, this actually looks somewhat more ambitious than anything else Illumination has made. Obviously not to the extent of ITSV or Puss in Boots 2, but it does look like a marginal amount of effort was put into it.

The idea of the Sonic movies turning out better than the Mario movie would have a distinct sense of irony to it.

I don’t understand why Grace Randolph keeps doing scoops regarding James Gunn projects when he always ends up debunking her. She should just stick to Zack Snyder scoops.

TASM movies always had defenders, or at least the first one did. Anyway, yeah, I can’t think of a single person who was ever willing to defend the live action Mario movie in all the previous years I’ve used the Internet. I wonder if there will ever be defenders for stuff like Dragonball Evolution, The Last Airbender and Fant4stic. Or do they already exist, and I’m not looking hard enough?

I get the impression that this is aiming to be a more “artsy” kind of movie from Nolan, and I don’t know if general audiences will be partial to that.

These are very strong numbers at the end of the day, but it does make me wonder if the next movie can keep up the momentum.

I keep forgetting this movie doesn’t come out for another year and a half.

I guess three hour movies are just the norm now.

How did he “bad mouthed Warner’s management?”

Ignoring what I already said about how it’s stupid to blame him for this movie’s failure, I was referring more to this general tendency WB seems to have of going after people they formerly worked with. They did it with Snyder and now they’re doing it with Dwayne Johnson. It strikes me as a rather bizarre tactic that could potentially make others less willing to work with the company. Seriously, are they gonna do this with James Gunn too if the DCU isn’t as successful as they’re hoping?

I don’t see how reviews would be much of an obstacle.

It’s almost guaranteed at this point that they are throwing away Momoa and Gadot. Momoa might play Lobo in the DCU, but his time as Aquaman looks like it’s just about finished. The only remnants of the DCEU that look like they’ll survive in the DCU are the James Gunn projects and maybe the Blue Beetle movie. I just think that if they’re gonna go to such great lengths to do a reboot, they might as well go all the way with it and start completely fresh. Of course, I still maintain that it’s too late for DC to do a new interconnected universe, and that they’d be better off focusing on standalone projects, but Zaslav wants WB to be like Disney, because he’s a cynical corporate executive who likes to chase trends.

I don’t know if WB’s tendency to throw people under the bus is a very sound business practice. Blaming The Rock for this movie’s failure just comes off as petty.

It’s not like Gunn’s own stuff was all that successful either. A full reboot would’ve been much simpler.

I have practically no enthusiasm for James Gunn’s DCU, but I want this movie to succeed. We need a Superman that isn’t divisive.

Superman was bigger than Batman until the mid to late 80s.

This is a very bad comparison, and I hope you realize that.

I remember that back when the first Shazam came out, Johnson did a video on his Instagram where he congratulated it on opening at number one. He didn’t seem to mind being associated with the character at the time, especially since his production company was producing the movie. I guess something must have changed for him in between movies, but I can’t imagine what. Maybe he just felt he needed to be the face of his own big franchise, like how Vin Diesel is the face of Fast & Furious?

I feel like if anything hurt the movie’s marketing, it’s the fact that WBD was half-assing it because they’re much more invested in devoting their resources to The Flash. The fact that they’re doing a reboot couldn’t have helped either.

Honestly, even if that’s true (and I’m not sure even how that would work, given that The Rock doesn’t own the Justice Society characters), the movie definitely didn’t flop because Hawkman or Atom Smasher didn’t show up for a mid-credits cameo.

I know. I’m not denying that The Rock has a silly ego that made him not want to associate with the Shazam movies. I just think it’s dumb how the article is trying to imply that he’s the one who doomed Shazam 2.

I guess The Rock is WB’s newest scapegoat.

As amusing as it is that The Rock had too much of an ego to want to be associated with the Shazam movies, the timing of this article and the way it’s framed comes across like WBD is trying to use him as a scapegoat for Shazam 2 flopping.