For whatever reason, DC will apparently be bringing one of their primary Justice League heroes to the screen at long last… and it will be another CW network TV show.
It’s being reported that the well-regarded CW show Arrow –which has successfully introduced Green Arrow to mainstream audiences this last year– will feature a Barry Allen origin story on its forthcoming season. From there, The Flash will spin-off with his own network show, expanding the DC roster on the small screen. This comes after the Batman/Superman announcement at Comic Con, which was preceded by trade-sourced rumors of a Flash movie announcement. No such news came from the actual WB panel.
If the Flash show is indeed fast-tracked as promised, it will come from the same creative team as Arrow: writers Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and director David Nutter. The scoop comes from Deadline, who also suggest CW might be brewing a second attempt at a Wonder Woman series as well.
I expect a great deal of fan frustration today, as WB/DC’s moves just do not in any way satisfy the core fandom the way Disney/Marvel’s rollout of their films has in recent years. The weird hesitations, lack of momentum, straddling of movies and TV… it just reads as haphazard, and does not suggest a strong vision behind WB’s exploitation of DC properties at the very top. At least, not one concerned with following Marvel’s (multi-billion dollar) gameplan. I’ve had people swear up and down at me that those at WB/DC know what they’re doing, but until they let anyone else in on that grand plan, shit looks clunky. Certainly the individual pieces of output work and work well- Arrow has earned a great deal of respect, while DC’s animated efforts are consistently great, and even Man Of Steel is generally agreed to be a decent footing for an expanding universe (if not a flawless film in and of itself). But we’re now weeks out from Man Of Steel and all we have is a logo for a team-up film that represents a dubious approach to a JL universe at best.
I’ve argued over and over that this is largely a perception issue, and that you’re just not going to see similar coherence from both stables. I think this will always be true, since DC was never its own autonomous film studio and thus no Kevin Feige-like figure at the top has ever been able to emerge. Disney has since acquired Marvel, but has largely stayed out of their filmmaking machinations, whereas DC’s shit is and has always been gummed up in the gears of the much larger WB machine.
All that said, Atlanta gent and web-writer extraordinaire Spencer Perry made a great point on the subject…
Fast tracking Flash as a TV show makes more sense than a movie. Get the character out there now before folks see Quicksilver TWICE.
— Spencer Perry (@TheSpencerPerry) July 30, 2013
You can’t give WB too much shit for using a successful team to reintroduce a new character, especially when Fox and Marvel are going to be setting the stage for super-speed heroes in films much sooner. It’s a fair point.
Your thoughts on the strategy? Any Arrow fans want to weigh in on this approach?