There’s an old saying: Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
I taught history (and coached football) for a living, so I know it when I see it — and we’re watching it happen in real time. If you want to understand what’s about to happen at DC Studios, you don’t need a crystal ball. You just need a memory…short term memory at that.
On Monday, James Gunn and Peter Safran were shown the door, and Jeremy Latcham was handed the keys to DC. Fine. New owners, new boss — that part I get, and I wrote about it right HERE. What I can’t get past is what came next, because within about a day, the trades told us exactly what the new regime’s plan is. Per THE WRAP, citing insiders:
What insiders also expect Latcham to do – by mandate of Ellison – is to get the Justice League back on the big screen as soon as possible. No more Polka Dot Men or even modestly known heroes like Supergirl. Latcham will be expected to get films for Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash and other heavyweights going in the years ahead.
Justice League. As soon as possible. Not earned, not built — ordered, straight from the top, like it’s a pizza. Gunn’s own roadmap, whatever you thought of it, didn’t get to a Justice League until 2029 or 2031. David Ellison’s clock says yesterday.
And understand me here, because this is the whole ballgame: The problem isn’t the timetable…it’s the destination.
A Justice League movie built on a shared universe isn’t a good idea being rushed — it’s a bad idea, full stop. It was the mistake in 2017. It was the mistake when Zaslav mandated it in 2022. And it’s the mistake right now, today, no matter whose name is on the door. Going faster in the wrong direction just gets you lost quicker.
And if you’re wondering what the tone of this new DC is going to be, don’t take my word for it. Take Ellison’s. In his own post announcing the hire, the first thing he sold about Latcham was this: “As part of the founding team behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he helped define the modern superhero movie.” Latcham was in the MCU brain trust that developed INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME. They didn’t hire a DC guy. They hired one of the founders of the MCU, and they bragged about it in the press release. Nothing says “fresh start for DC” like leading with your MCU résumé.
Now here’s the history lesson, because we’ve seen this movie before — literally.
Back in 2013, when Warner Bros. was gearing up to chase the MCU for the first time, Christopher Nolan told them not to. Make great standalone films. Don’t reverse-engineer a universe. They didn’t listen. They sprinted from MAN OF STEEL to BATMAN v SUPERMAN to a JUSTICE LEAGUE the audience hadn’t been given any reason to care about, and the 2017 JUSTICE LEAGUE — yes, the one with the CGI mustache. Then, in 2022, David Zaslav stood up and said the quiet part out loud: DC needed a ten-year plan like the one Bob Iger and Alan Horn built “with Kevin Feige at Disney.” That led us to the Gunn slate announcement — most of which never happened and never will. And the one stretch in the last decade where DC actually started kinda-sorta working and had a chance? The Hamada years, when the philosophy was standalone-first: JOKER made a billion dollars and won Oscars, and THE BATMAN launched a saga people actually care about. Neither one connected to a damn thing.
Different regimes. Same lessons. Same damn test that’s been failed every time. And now the new owners are picking up the same #2 pencil. And me? I’m just the guy who’s graded this test three times now (I was a history teacher, remember?). Forgive me if I’m not optimistic about going down that road yet again.
Bottom line: They will never achieve what the MCU did. Nobody will. What Disney pulled off with the MCU was organic, a specific moment — a decade-long head start, a once-in-a-generation run of casting and timing — and frankly, even MCU isn’t the MCU anymore. Chasing it in 2026 is chasing a ghost.
And here’s the part nobody in a boardroom wants to hear: DC doesn’t need a universe to save it. It never did. DC’s greatest hits, from THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY to JOKER to THE BATMAN, share exactly one trait: A filmmaker with a vision, left alone to make one great movie. That’s not a consolation prize until the “real” universe gets built. That’s DC’s actual identity — the thing that makes it different from Marvel — and it keeps getting treated like a problem to fix. Just make good DC stuff. Standalone. Filmmaker-driven. Shared universe be damned. That’s not my radical new idea, folks. That’s the lesson Christopher Nolan tried to teach them over a decade ago.
And let me be clear about something else, because I don’t want this misread as a Batman-only argument: This goes for the entire DC library. The other characters don’t need a shared universe to succeed either — the receipts prove it. WONDER WOMAN made over $800 million as a standalone World War I adventure; nobody in those seats was there because it “connected” to anything. AQUAMAN cleared a billion dollars as a big solo adventure that basically minded its own business. JOKER — without Batman — made a billion and won Oscars standing completely alone. And Superman, the character who started this whole genre in 1978, did it without a single post-credits scene. These are icons, folks. Wonder Woman doesn’t need the League to matter. Neither does Superman, or Green Lantern, or The Flash. They don’t need to hold hands and have sleepovers to put butts in seats. They need good movies, made by people who understand the characters.
Which brings me to the monkey wrench in Skydance’s shiny new plan, and you already know his name.
Batman.
Or in this case right now, The Batman.
For a Justice League film to be done properly, it has to include Batman, I get it. However, the only Batman Skydance has is Robert Pattinson, in the middle of Matt Reeves’ standalone SAGA. THE BATMAN PART II is, per Puck’s reporting, one of the three projects explicitly safe in this shakeup. It’s filming — it’s protected.
And that’s before you get to the real problem: Reeves’ Batman doesn’t fit in a Justice League world. His Gotham is grounded — street-level, rain-soaked, no aliens, no gods, no magic — a world where a man dressed as a bat is the strangest thing in it. The minute you drop a Kryptonian, an Amazon warrior, and a man who runs through time into that world, it stops being Reeves’ world. His Batman works because he’s the only one out there. That’s not a problem with the SAGA, that is the SAGA.
On Monday, in this space, I argued that a huge PART II would put them in a tight spot — that if it does a billion dollars, the audience will have made the PART III call for them. I want to believe that…I desperately want to believe that. But I’ve sat with this mandate for a couple of days now, and here’s the ugly truth I keep landing on: This plan doesn’t run on box office. It runs on instructions. The Justice League order was handed down before Latcham’s first day on the job — it doesn’t care what PART II grosses. And “protected” only means PART II gets finished and released. PART III doesn’t yet exist, so a trilogy doesn’t have to be cancelled. It just has to never be said yes to.
So, I’ll say it plain, and it’s my opinion: I now believe THE BATMAN PART II ends this saga — no matter how successful it is. They have their chance, right now, to finally do DC right. And what are they planning? To build their own MCU. Again. It’s mind boggling. Because once you’ve committed to a Justice League film on the fastest possible clock, Reeves’ Batman isn’t an asset to you — he’s an inconvenience. He doesn’t connect. He doesn’t cameo. He doesn’t set up the next four movies. He just stands there, in his own world, being the best thing DC has — and in a shared-universe regime, that’s the one thing you’re not allowed to be.
Maybe they try to fold Pattinson into “DCU 2.0” and screw up the one good thing they’ve got going — break the very thing audiences bought into, a Batman in his own world, on his own terms. Or maybe they just let the SAGA end and cast their JL Blue Batman. Both roads lead to the same place: The shared universe wins, and the best of Batman on film since the days of Nolan pays for it.
The answer is still the one that’s been sitting there the whole time, the one Nolan gave them for free over a decade ago: Let Reeves finish what he started. One Batman at a time. Standalone, good DC projects — and the shared universe be damned.
History’s lessons are free, in case you didn’t know. It’s the tuition for ignoring them that gets expensive. Warner Bros. paid it in 2017. Zaslav’s regime paid it for four years. Skydance just bought the studio and it sure looks like they are going to head down the same doomed DC on film path.
And the SAGA? I hope I’m wrong. I really do. But I’m not holding my breath. – Bill “Jett” Ramey
