The fallout from ‘Justice League’s tepid release continues with Warner Bros. finding a new executive to head up DC’s films…
Warner Bros. has tapped a new executive to lead the future of DC’s comic book films after Jon Berg left that role following a lackluster release for ‘Justice League’, which was expected to be one of the biggest films of the year.
Now Walter Hamada will step in and serve as the president over DC films as he leads the division responsible for a slew of upcoming comic book movies including ‘Aquaman’, ‘Wonder Woman 2’ and several other features already in the works at Warner Bros.
Hamada is best known from his prior role as an executive at New Line where he heralded a slew of horror movie hits including the development of Stephen King’s ‘It’ as well as ‘The Conjuring’ series and ‘The Gallows’.
Now Hamada will be tasked with revamping an ailing studio with DC seemingly falling further and further behind Marvel Studios with each movie released outside of ‘Wonder Woman’, which was a smash hit for the studio last year. Unfortunately while ‘Wonder Woman’ was one of the biggest and most well reviewed movies of the year, DC got hammered for ‘Justice League’, which was a critical and commercial disappointment, especially when compared to Marvel’s similar release of ‘The Avengers’ several years ago.
“Walter is creative, resourceful, and committed to excellence, and will bring those qualities to his oversight of our superhero films,” Warner Bros. president Toby Emmerich said in a statement to Variety.
Geoff Johns, who is the president and chief creative officer at DC Comics, will remain as a key consultant to work alongside Hamada in developing the next slate of films while he also continues in his role working with television and comic book development as well.
Hamada will definitely have his hands full with a lot of ongoing issues to clean up at DC after the majority of the films released by the studio have been panned by critics and fans alike. ‘Wonder Woman’ remains the one diamond in the rough for DC with virtually every other film released including ‘Justice League’, ‘Batman V. Superman’ and ‘Suicide Squad’ considered critical disasters.
DC has envisioned a shared universe for their films similar to what Kevin Feige has crafted for nearly a decade at Marvel but the result has been far different between the two comic book giants.
Following the poor release of ‘Justice League’, it seemed entirely possible that Warner Bros. might just scrap many future plans for the comic book films that had been previously announced but instead they will turn to Hamada to try and right the ship.
With Hamada in place, it will be interesting to see what moves he makes, especially with the laundry list of titles that have been announced at DC over the past few years with no real direction for the studio past 2018. Add to that there’s been widespread speculation that Ben Affleck is looking to exit his role as Batman with director Matt Reeves already looking to go in a different direction for his solo feature film in the works on the Caped Crusader.
