They’re two of the most successful movies of the year, grossing a combined $1.5 billion at the global box office.
“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad” are also two of the year’s biggest disappointments, met with viciously negative reviews, bitter fans’ complaints and large second-weekend sales drops that indicate word-of-mouth was unkind, to say the least. The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern wrote that “Suicide Squad” represented “an all-out attack on the whole idea of entertainment” due to its “exceptional cynicism and startling ineptitude.”
Warner Bros. is responding to this paradox by charging full-speed ahead with plans for its DC “cinematic universe”—while conceding the movies to date have fallen creatively short, a rare public admission in Hollywood.
The studio has reworked the 2017-slated “Justice League” in hopes of making it less grim and depressing than March’s “Batman v Superman.” And it has put fan-favorite comic book and TV writer Geoff Johns in a senior position overseeing the next wave of movies, along with veteran production executive Jon Berg.
One of the duo’s main goals, they said in their first interview since taking the jobs this past spring, is to make DC superheroes on the big screen more inspiring.
“Mistakenly in the past I think the studio has said, ‘Oh, DC films are gritty and dark and that’s what makes them different.’ That couldn’t be more wrong,” said Mr. Johns, who has written comic books featuring most of the company’s top superheroes. “It’s a hopeful and optimistic view of life. Even Batman has a glimmer of that in him. If he didn’t think he’d make tomorrow better, he’d stop.”
Many have complained that such a sense of optimism was precisely what was missing from director Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman” and his 2013 Superman reboot “Man of Steel.” Neither Ben Affleck’s Batman nor Henry Cavill’s Superman crack a smile, and both films feature so much death and destruction, including killings perpetrated by the main characters, that bloggers labeled them the “DC cinematic murderverse.”
The shuffle that made DC movies a full-time job for Messrs. Berg and Johns came soon after the public reaction to “Batman v Superman.” Previously, no Warner executives were devoted exclusively to the studio’s superhero films. Mr. Berg worked on them along with other productions, and Mr. Johns was a consultant with no authority.
Their appointments indicate that after giving Mr. Snyder the type of long leash accorded Christopher Nolan on the hit “Dark Knight” Batman trilogy, Warner has concluded it needs to oversee its DC movies more closely.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Snyder said he was unavailable to comment.
There was precedent in comics for Mr. Snyder’s interpretations, particularly Frank Miller’s revered 1986 comic-book miniseries “The Dark Knight Returns,” in which Batman and Superman battle. And director David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad,” though it had significant reshoots and last-minute editing, was never going to be a lighthearted romp, since its source material is about villains coerced into doing good.
While they knew the movies had flaws and expected them to be controversial, Warner executives were taken aback by the overwhelmingly negative responses, people at the studio said. They believed they had created more grounded, character-based stories that, like “The Dark Knight,” would favorably stand out from chief rival Marvel Studios’ consistently successful but fluffier fare such as “Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
The negative reactions were troubling. Despite the box office, if people aren’t happy and excited to see what’s next when they come out of theaters, the long-term prospects for DC films and consumer products are poor. Warner plans to release at least two movies based on DC characters every year for the foreseeable future at a cost of several billion dollars. CEO Kevin Tsujihara has said DC is one of three pillars of his studio’s movie business, along with Harry Potter and Lego.
Still, Warner executives have found reasons to take heart. The fact that this year’s movies were met with strident opinions—instead of a shrug like the Twentieth Century Fox 2015 superhero flop “Fantastic Four”—indicates that fans care about the characters.