The world works in mysterious ways. And the ways of DC Comics are even weirder. Just when we thought the arrival of new president Walter Hamada would shake things up and lead to a more robust DCEU comes one of the most shocking and traumatic reveals a DC fan would ever have to go through.
According to some pretty reputable online sources (we’re talking about The Hollywood Reporter here), contract negotiations between Henry Cavill and Warner Bros. have broken down. The result? Cavill is free to walk out of the DC Expanded Universe and exited the DCEU he has. Yet another reason cited for this is Warner Bros’s desire to move ahead with a Supergirl movie which is being planned as an origin story with a teen lead. This rules out Henry Cavill’s existence given his age would contrast starkly with those aspirations.
To further add salt to the wounds, another reliable source Deadline is reporting that Warner Bros. is eyeing Michael B. Jordan as a potential Superman down the road. The acclaimed actor won over commercial audiences with his portrayal as Erik Killmonger in Marvel’s Black Panther and his casting as Superman would be the first time that a black actor has even been considered for the role, let alone cast.
There were talks about Cavill doing a cameo as Superman in the upcoming Shazam starring Zachary Levi but none of that materialized. Instead, Warner Bros. doesn’t plan on making a Superman movie for the next several years. Their hesitance in part, according to a studio insider, is an internal acknowledgment that parts of the previous Superman movies didn’t work. It’s possible they don’t wish to get their hands dirty with Kal-El again, seeing as the last globally successful Superman flick in terms of both reception and box-office was Superman II in 1980.
Now it’s hard to tell you folks to take this with a grain of salt, seeing the kind of sources behind the rumors. Even so, nothing is set in stone until either Warner Bros. or Henry Cavill issue an official statement of some sort, or at least confirm or allude to it in one of their interviews. For now, nothing of that sort has happened so fans can still hold some hope. While The Hollywood Reporter has a mostly impeccable track record, it has been wrong in the past albeit occasionally. News outlets swayed back and forth between James Gunn being rehired and it being out of the question after his recent ouster, so let’s still have some hope.
Assuming this is true though, I’m bewildered beyond belief. This is pretty much the final nail in the coffin for a shared DC Universe and chances are high DC will go the road of individual movies, without any event movies uniting the cast for a team-up. Soon, cracks will start showing up in the internal logic of the DCEU and before you know it, they’ll be making solo movies without regard to any continuity issues. At this point, the only thing we can hope is that this turns out to be false and if it’s true, DC at least give us some really solid movies as food to help us swallow and digest this bitter pill.
What are your thoughts on this? Sound off in the comments below.
