Earlier today I shared an interview with Warner Bros.’ new president and chief content officer, but Variety also chatted with DC Films presidents Geoff Johns and Jon Berg about the success of Wonder Woman and current state of the DC Extended Universe.
It sounds like Jon Berg actually agreed with critics about Suicide Squad, and sees ways to improve it in the sequel. “On Suicide Squad, the movie did incredibly well commercially. It didn’t work narratively,” he said. “You had some great casting and some great characterizations, but where the story fell down was on narrative, on plot. We could do better. Batman v. Superman was tonally dark. People didn’t respond to that.”
Geoff Johns boasted about DC’s great female characters, promising that more female driven movies are on the way. “There are many wonderful elements to the DC Universe, and one of them is that we have the best female characters, heroes and villains, in the world,” he said. “No one is going to beat Wonder Woman and Batgirl and Harley Quinn.”
Johns said that he and Patty Jenkins are currently writing Wonder Woman 2, and that they have a “cool” idea for the sequel.
Despite the success that Wonder Woman is seeing right now, her role in Justice League will not be changed. But she already had a pretty big role, Johns explained. “Her role won’t change, but she was already playing a big role. People really responded to Gal [Gadot] in Batman v. Superman. We knew we had something special.”
Expect Joss Whedon to play a big role in the DCEU going forward. In fact, he’s already a big part of it, according to Berg. “He’s a big part already. We love him. He’s a great partner, collaborator; we want him to be ensconced. We bring people by, have general meetings and talk about comics and their favorite superhero movies. With Joss, he saw the master board, and he saw a Batgirl title and he said, ‘You guys seriously want to do Batgirl?’ And we said, ‘Absolutely.’ He said, ‘That’s my jam.'”
SOURCE: Variety
