DC Films News Roundup: Batgirl, Suicide Squad 2, Shazam, and More!

Great googly moogly, it's getting crazy in here with DC rumors a'flying, y'all. First up, let's talk Mr. Sexual Harassment Panda himself Joss Whedon. 

The man has a proclivity for whedon out the fertile soil of all his young starlets, but now he's gonna restore dignity to the DCEU with Justice League. The fallen feminist icon was brought on to help fix the film's ending strictly as a writer, but has now taken over directing duties on the film when a family emergency led to Zack Snyder stepping off the project. Hopes across DC fandom were that Whedon could somehow use his $30 million dollar reshoots to make it less of a Zack Snyder joint, but then it turned out he wouldn't be receiving a directing credit. 

Via Comic Book Movie, Warner Brothers sent out a press release confirming that Whedon would at least be receiving a writing credit on Justice League. The official writing credits are listed as "Story by Chris Terrio & Zack Snyder, Screenplay by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon." So that's a win for Whedon at least in that regard.

Despite his social outcast status among feminists now, it's doubtful he'll be becoming an MRA anytime soon. He'll just sort of end up another misfit director, especially considering he's staying in the DC family to write and direct a Batgirl movie. 

That's right folks, Variety wrote up a lengthy piece about the goings on at DC, and a particular revelation was that they had no plan to even make a Batgirl movie until a pre-disgraced Whedon came in and pitched them on a great film. My favorite tidbit from this section is as follows...

Whedon’s film, however, isn’t part of the new DC banner, which is expected to create one-off films set outside the larger-budget tentpoles of DC’s current cinematic universe.

This is alluding to the news that DC would be producing a standalone Joker film, not tied to the current DCEU continuity, from the director of The Hangover and produced by Martin Scorsese?

In that same article from Variety is a bit more information on the DC side-story/standalone universe that's allegedly being built...

Phillips’ planned Joker film would be the first under a new, untitled DC banner that won’t be constrained by the continuity that holds together DC’s extended universe, featuring Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and other characters. The banner is intended to give the studio the chance to expand the canon with unusual story angles

So there's your proof that there will be more of these movies as DC likely tries to get ahead of Marvel on this idea of standalone movies outside the MCU continuity. How will movie audiences react to a trend that's familiar to anyone who has spent more than two consecutive years reading comic books? Who knows? My money's on this Joker thing falling apart rather than ever actually happening. 

Speaking of the Joker, roundabout last week a Suicide Squad sequel was said to be fast-tracked over at DC, but that didn't pan out. Instead, we're now getting word that the film may have been back-burnered while DC figures out who's gonna direct the damn thing. 

Once again via Comic Book Movie, Variety's Justin Kroll scooped on Twitter that the Suicide Squad sequel won't go into production until the back half of 2018 due to Will Smith's shooting schedule on Aladdin. That's an interesting development and one that will hopefully give them all time to work on the script and find a director who could do something interesting with the material. There's a ton of potential there, don't just hand it over to the guy who directed the latest Annabelle prequel...

Oh wait, now I'm confusing DC projects. No, the guy who directed the recent hit Annabelle: Creation is actually directing another DC movie, Shazam! The Rock Johnson is no longer going to appear as the villainous Black Adam, and the film will now be focused more on the title character. 

Sandberg took to Instagram over the last two days to show that pre-production has begun in earnest on the film, so we should probably expect to see a release date and a trailer by the end of the month. Just kidding, just kidding, man, you guys are so touchy.