Batman V Superman: Warner Bros boss explains release date change | Den of Geek
When Warner Bros shifted Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice to 2016, it left a hole in its schedule. So why did it do it?
For a while, there was going to be the biggest clash of superheroes we’d ever seen at the box office. You may recall that Warner Bros originally had Zack Snyder’s Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice set to land in July of this year, before pushing it back to May 6th 2016. At that stage, Marvel had earmarked that date for a then-unnamed movie, which we now know as Captain Amerca: Civil War. It refused to blink on the release date, and Warner Bros thus moved Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice again, to where it now sits on March 25th 2016.
But why move the film from 2015 in the first place? Warner Bros, Mad Max: Fury Road aside, hasn’t had much of a summer movie season and its CEO, Kevin Tsujihara, had admitted that shifting the Batman V Superman project “was a tough decision at the time because it was going to create a hole in 2015”. Which id did, and the studio has paid a price for that.
However, he continued, saying that “it was absolutely the right decision for the franchise, for DC and the movie. Having see the movie multiple times, and then again last night, I’m extremely confident it was the right decision to make the movie better. And it’s so important for the studio to get the foundation right on DC”.
He’s not kidding there. Warner Bros is near to gambling the house of its DC movie universe, with two of its annual blockbusters a year given over to comic book projects until at least 2020. It doesn’t want to be rebooting anything again if it can help it.
2016 will be pivotal then, not least because David Ayer’s Suicide Squad film is being lined up for August 2016 as well. More on both films as we hear it…