Category Archives: DC Comics

‘Secret’ screenings of cancelled Batgirl movie being held by studio – reports

Posted on by

It remains unlikely the public will ever see the scrapped $90m film, with the directors saying ‘it cannot be released in its current state’

Warner Bros Discovery are reportedly holding a series of discreet “funeral screenings” for their never-to-be released DC film Batgirl, starring Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed with multiple sources that a select few who worked on the film, including cast, crew and studio executives, would be attending the screenings this week on the Warner Bros lot in California. One source described them as “funeral screenings”, as it is likely the footage will be stored forever and never shown to the public.

Continue reading...

Ezra Miller breaks silence to apologise ‘to everyone that I have alarmed’

Posted on by

In their first statement since legal issues began, non-binary actor says they have begun treatment for ‘complex mental health issues’

Actor Ezra Miller has broken their silence amid a growing list of legal issues and allegations of erratic behaviour, saying they are seeking treatment for “complex mental health issues”.

In a statement provided by a representative of the actor to Variety on Tuesday, the 29-year-old non-binary actor apologised for any alarm they may have caused.

Continue reading...

Marvel sues to retain control of Avengers characters

Posted on by

The comics giant has issued lawsuits in a bid to hold on to the copyright of heroes including Spider-Man and Iron Man

Marvel has filed a series of lawsuits in a bid to retain full control of characters including Spider-Man and Iron Man.

The complaints, which were obtained by the Hollywood Reporter, came after the estate of the late comic book artist Steve Ditko filed a notice of termination with the US Copyright Office for the copyright of Spider-Man and Dr Strange. Both are currently held by Marvel Entertainment, but the estate of Ditko, who co-created both characters with the late Stan Lee, is looking to terminate the grant of copyright to Marvel by June 2023 through a clause in US copyright law.

Continue reading...

Marvel and DC face backlash over pay: ‘They sent a thank you note and $5,000 – the movie made $1bn’

Posted on by

As the comics giants make billions from their storylines and characters, writers and artists are speaking out about their struggles for fair payment

Watch any superhero movie and you will see a credit along the lines of “based on the comic book created by”, usually with the name of a beloved and/or long-dead writer or artist. But deep, deep in the credits scroll, you will also see “special thanks” to a long roster of comic book talent, most of them still alive, whose work forms the skeleton and musculature of the movie you just watched. Scenes storyboarded directly from Batman comics by Frank Miller; character arcs out of Thor comics by Walt Simonson; entire franchises, such as the Avengers films or Disney+ spinoff The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, that couldn’t exist without the likes of Kurt Busiek or Ed Brubaker.

The “big two” comic companies – Marvel and DC - may pretend they’ve tapped into some timeless part of the human psyche with characters such as Superman and the Incredible Hulk, but the truth is that their most popular stories have been carefully stewarded through the decades by individual artists and writers. But how much of, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) $20bn-plus box office gross went to those who created the stories and characters in it? How are the unknown faces behind their biggest successes being treated?

Continue reading...

The Suicide Squad review – eyeball-blitzing supervillain reboot

Posted on by

Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn is a good directorial fit for the humour and freaky violence of DC’s bad-guy jamboree

DC’s new Suicide Squad movie announces itself as different from the coolly received first film from 2016 simply by adding “The” to the title, maybe sneakily trying for an unacknowledged rebrand or reboot. James Gunn, also in charge of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, is brought on board as director and co-writer. This second Squad outing (if you don’t count last year’s standalone Harley Quinn adventure Birds of Prey) is a long, loud, often enjoyable and amusing film that blitzes your eyeballs and eardrums and covers all the bases. There is Guardians-style comedy mixing humans and talking animals, there is freaky violence – including what I have to say is a gruesomely impressive interior-anatomical shot, showing a knife plunging into the still-beating heart – and there is colossal CGI spectacle for the final act in which a giant thing runs rampant in a city, while the gang look up at it; a trope that has become almost legally mandatory for superhero movies.

Viola Davis once again brings a touch of class to the Suicide Squad franchise as the chillingly manipulative security chief Amanda Waller who now springs supervillain Bloodsport (Idris Elba) from jail so that he can head up an elite new crew of misfits, desperadoes and undesirables. These include Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), the ironically belligerent Peacemaker (John Cena), King Shark – a great big talking shark in Hulk-ish stretchy shorts – voiced by Sylvester Stallone, Ratcatcher II (Daniela Melchior), who commands an army of rats wherever she goes, and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), who fires molten polka-dots at the enemy, revving himself up for the task by imagining that this is his overbearing mother. There is also a kind of B-team of Squadders whose job is to be hilariously expendable.

Continue reading...

Power dressing: which superhero has the best costume?

Posted on by

From Superman’s Y-fronts to Hulk’s tattered shorts, superheroes have made their fair share of fashion faux pas – but whose outfit actually works?

In the Guide’s weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you’ve been burning to know the answer to – and settle it, once and for all

When saving the planet, it’s important to dress the part. This isn’t like taking the bins out. You can’t hang off a chopper in a slanket and Crocs. Superheroes understand this. Unlike James Bond – who is permanently tuxed up as if he’s about to host a pharmaceutical industry awards bash – the offspring of Marvel and DC Comics have brought spandex, codpieces and vulcanised rubber out of the niche-interest sex-toy trade and into the multiplex. But which superhero has the best costume?

Continue reading...

¡Kapow! Batman takes holiday in Benidorm in DC Comics anthology

Posted on by

Caped Crusader battles villains across the globe in Batman: the World – but he’s in Spain to relax

Given his 82 long years of rooftop vigilantism, the dank, lonely surroundings of his home office – not to mention the tickly throat irritation caused by all those growled threats – few would begrudge Batman some sun, a nice paella and a cheeky mid-morning pint. Or five.

Benidorm, fortunately, is only too happy to oblige. The eastern Spanish resort is among the exotic locations that feature in Batman: the World, a new global anthology to be published by DC Comics in September.

Continue reading...

Wonder Woman 1984 review – queenly Gal Gadot disarms the competition

Posted on by

Gadot is terrifically imposing, while Kristen Wiig is the scene-stealing antagonist in Patty Jenkins’ epically brash sequel

Here is an enjoyable Amazonian incursion into Reagan’s America – but the real wonder is Kristen Wiig, playing the warrior queen’s resentful and emotionally wounded antagonist, Barbara Minerva.

It is 1984, that pre-Covid utopian era of big hair, rolled-up jacket sleeves and imminent nuclear war, and Diana of Themyscira is getting her second superheroic adventure in a world dominated by over-promoted mortal males. The first time we saw this mythical warrior queen, played as here by Gal Gadot, and with outrageously gorgeous outfits, she had just surreally shown up in the middle of the first world war. Now Diana Prince (she is never called Wonder Woman, even obliquely) is living discreetly as a civilian in the Washington of Ronald Reagan – or as discreetly as someone so resplendent can.

Prince works as a demure archaeologist at the Smithsonian museum, and it is here that Diana examines an ancient stone that has the magical power to grant any person one wish. Poor, lonely Diana silently wishes to be reunited with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) the dashing airman with whom she was once very much in love. But her nerdy colleague, maladroit gemologist Minerva, who has a beta-stalkerish fascination with the impossibly gorgeous Diana, wishes to be every bit as strong as her. And there is a third wisher: megalomaniac oil entrepreneur and museum donor Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), who wants more than one wish, so he sneakily wishes to be turned into the stone, to become a human wishing stone, so that he can persuade any individual he meets to wish for something beneficial to his interests. Could it be that Maxwell Lord is a version of Norman Vincent Peale, the positive-thinking guru who was such an influence on presidents Nixon and Trump?

Continue reading...

Batman star Robert Pattinson ‘tests positive for Covid-19’

Posted on by

Actor will reportedly self-isolate as Warner Bros halts UK production of The Batman

The actor Robert Pattinson has tested positive for Covid-19, according to US media reports, halting production of the film The Batman just days after it resumed following lockdown.

A spokesperson for Warner Bros, the Hollywood studio behind the film, said: “A member of The Batman production has tested positive for Covid-19, and is isolating in accordance with established protocols. Filming is temporarily paused.”

Continue reading...

Auteurs assemble! What caused the superhero backlash?

Posted on by

They’ve conquered the box office. Now it’s payback time. As they are attacked by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, are TV and movie superheroes fighting a losing battle against reality?

Alan Moore’s celebrated 1986 series Watchmen revolved around a conspiracy to kill off masked vigilantes, and in effect that’s what it did in real life. Compared with the complex, mature, literary nature of Watchmen, most other comic-book titles looked juvenile and two-dimensional. This was at a time when “comic-book movies” meant Christopher Reeve’s wholesome Superman series, and when the only inhabitant of the Marvel movie universe was Howard the Duck. The entire industry had to up its game, and a new era of mature “graphic novels” was born.

Now we appear to have come full circle – which is fitting for a story so heavy with clock symbolism. With uncanny timing, HBO’s lavish new Watchmen series arrives at a moment when comic-book movies are again in what you might call a decadent phase of the cycle. They have decisively conquered our screens and our box offices, with ever grander and more improbable forms of spectacle, to the extent that we’re now beginning to question how much more of them we need. Could Watchmen kill off the superheroes once again?

Continue reading...

What’s really at stake if AT&T buys Time Warner

Posted on by
After all the shouting this election season, perhaps it's no wonder AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is proposing a tone-deaf $85.4 billion megamerger with Time Warner. On paper, the deal may have seemed like a shoo-in -- after all, the Department of Justice approved a similar merger between Comcast and NBC Universal in 2011.