New Gods Movie

[ZariusTwo]

Ava DuVernay has signed on to helm the New Gods movie

http://variety.com/2018/film/news/av...dc-1202725043/

[Andrew NDB]

I like the New Gods but... is this a good idea? They've never been able to even hold down a comic for longer than a year or two, let alone anything else.

[Autbot_Benz]

As long as Oprah isn't in it I am good. Be cool too see Orion Mr Miracle Big Berda and Granny Goodness

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Sure, DC/WB... sure.

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I like the New Gods but... is this a good idea? They've never been able to even hold down a comic for longer than a year or two, let alone anything else.

I think it's great because it's not only wildly imaginative, but it's quite different, relatively speaking, from other comic book movies we are seeing right now.

I can't comment on the director though, so that, along with DC's track record with films lately, is where my trepidation comes in.

[Andrew NDB]

Two things. One, this is probably phase 2 of Geoff Johns' "DC movies can be light! See!" (phase 1 is Shazam). Two, WB saw what happened with WW and now with Black Panther and wants to make a film insulated from criticism by diversity. As things get underway I expect to see lots of behind the scenes things telling us all about how the cast and crew are so diverse and enjoy working together so much.

Maybe a third thing: WB was really, really banking on A Wrinkle being a bona fide hit. Oops.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

What is even the point of all these announcements?

At this point, I think WB needs to shut up and not announce a single movie until they're showing trailers. Announce they've signed directors and actors and actresses, but don't say crap about what the movies are. Nerds and critics alike will speculate out the wazoo. Then wow people with trailers.

I think that might help buy back a little positive PR. It sure would from ME, anyway.

[NinjaPug]

After seeing Wrinkle in Time I don't want to see any big budget movie with Ava at the helm. Granted the script was awful so she didn't have much to work with but WiT was a poorly shot movie. Her framing choices in the first act of the movie were awful - every single shot was a close up of someone's face and the editing exacerbated these bad choices.

I know all the reviewers wanted to give Ava the benefit of the doubt with WiT but it was awful and it concerns me that she's involved with another movie of that size again already.

[Sumac]

I believe it, when I see it.

I am not familiar with New Gods lore, but it seems something really big and "trippy" for the lack of the best term. Not sure it's what DC needs right now. On the other hand, at this point they might as well try anything. I am pretty sure that they plans to make cinematic universe akin to Marvel one are in shambles anyway.

As for the choice of the director - I don't know. Haven't seen any of her works, but some people are already hyping this movie, as if it was already shot and about to be released on the next week. And some already suspect racism, when people have doubts about this project and a director.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Two, WB saw what happened with WW and now with Black Panther and wants to make a film insulated from criticism by diversity. As things get underway I expect to see lots of behind the scenes things telling us all about how the cast and crew are so diverse and enjoy working together so much.

Sadly, I am agree that this might be a possibility.
But on the other hand, it didn't save Wrinkle from being a failure with audience and critics, so no amount of propaganda will help this movie become box office hit, if it is not a good movie.
So, at least there is a silver lining.

Of course, if this project become something more than a "project", since lately WB has a habit of announcing bunch of stuff and then cancel it, en masse.

[Autbot_Benz]

not going forward it has been cancelled

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...source=twitter

New Gods, which would have been a sprawling tale, was complicated by the fact that its villain, Darkseid, just appeared as a major foil in Zack Snyder's Justice League and there was a desire to have space between the latter and any new appearances.

[Galactus]

^^^

I don't buy that as a reason at all. We have potentially three different Batmen appearing on the big screen why would it be complicated to have two different Darkseids? It's not like the general audience even checked out the Justice League Snyder cut and even for those that did it would potentially be a good thing to have another movie with the character. Hey were you intrigued by that Thanos-looking dude at the end well here's a movie that explains who that is.

[IMJ]

Any chance this is DuVernay's attempt at April Fool's humor?
I mean... I can see it being true, but the timing here....

[Galactus]

I think this was always a long shot. The New Gods was always going to be difficult to adapt and I can definitely see WB passing on it is being too difficult.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Galactus

It's not like the general audience even checked out the Justice League Snyder cut

https://www.cbr.com/hbo-max-justice-...ecord-numbers/

I get that you don't like the guy's movies but you don't have to flat-out lie to people in support of your own subjective opinion that they're no good. Going by The Facts it was very clearly not just "diehards" who were watching ZSJL. It outperformed WW84, even. Which most agree was terrible BUT was also very much a movie a lot of people were looking forward to - and yes, that includes a lot of people in "the general audience".
--------

Anyway. The article I read earlier had an altogether different reason for New Gods being cancelled, that being there was too much material for one movie, which makes a lot of sense. But given how uncertain the future for "blockbuster" movies is right now, it unfortunately makes sense that they'd scrap the project entirely rather than retool it as a series. All the announced DC movies they're moving forward with are more stand-alone type of stuff; obviously if they do well there might be sequels, but an entire trilogy of films for something like New Gods is definitely not something WB is in any position to commit to right now.

I don't see a thread for it, but that "The Trench" movie that was gonna be spun off from "Aquaman" was also cancelled. Allegedly, because James Wan was too busy. Real Reason probably being, nobody actually asked for that movie and everyone's already forgotten that they announced it in the first place.

[IMJ]

I've got a beautiful 9.6 slab of New Gods #1 too, that was just begging to have the speculators hear movie news!

LOL and that's the thing that's ashame about modern comic collecting. A book like that is a true hobby-wide key, but neo-collector's are not sophisticated at all and don't care about something unless it's going to be on film.

[Galactus]

It's twice now you've said that I don't like Zack Snyder movies which isn't true. I keep saying I'm okay with them, they are interesting I just think he was the best choice to direct the DCEU.

I must be behind on comic book movie news as last I heard it hadn't beat Wonder Woman 1984 and just narrowly beat Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Not that it matters, are we really arguing that the casual audience is here for Snyder's Justice League?

Anyway I'd probably agree that the idea of there being too much material there to adapt was probably what put them off even if I don't really agree with that myself.

[Leo656]

- I can only work with what you give me, you only ever really talk about his movies in a negative context. I can't read your mind. Regardless of how you really think/feel, you SPEAK as someone who doesn't like his movies because all you do out loud is talk about what you didn't like, so that's what I'm left to assume.

- I'm not "arguing" anything, simply pointing out that you made a statement that the "general audience" didn't watch the movie and that your statement is provably false. Quite a lot of people in the "general audience" watched it. Again, your comment came off as passive-aggressive and I can only work with what you give me. Not "arguing" anything, I just don't like when people make provably-false statements in such an authoritative tone. Call it a "pet peeve".
---------

To topic:

- Too much material for one single movie, sure, definitely. It's a very dense mythology. The fact that it seems like they were sincerely going to try and "cram" it all into one film in the first place just shows me how much WB misses the mark with stuff. In her "sorry it's not happening" post, the scriptwriter name-dropped like a half-dozen characters who all would apparently have been in this, and it just would have been Way Too Much.

One of the biggest criticisms of the DC films has been that they try and do too much at once. I don't necessarily agree, I rather think that their movies simply mimic the comic book method of storytelling where you don't spend a lot of time on preamble, you just throw a bunch of stuff at the audience and fill in the backstory in bits and pieces as you go along. People can agree or disagree about whether that "works" or not for movies as well as it does for comic books, and that's a conversation. My point is, given that it IS something people always whine about with regard to DC movies... yeah, doing Darkseid and Highfather and Orion and Kalibak and Lightray and Metron and Big Barda and Mr. Miracle and Apokolips and New Genesis all in ONE MOVIE - which apparently was the plan - would have been a f*cking disaster.

That's why I didn't have any problem with Zack using Darkseid in his JL movies and then letting the other New Gods stuff be spun out of that, same as they did with Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Once some of the basic character stuff is established you don't need to retread it in the stand-alone movies and can do other things. Having Darkseid and Co. already fairly well-established in JL would have left more room in the New Gods movie to flesh out some of the other characters and concepts. But even then, one movie isn't nearly enough.

For "New Gods" it needs to be a trilogy or nothing. There's just too much going on. Frankly, I'd leave Barda and Miracle as minor characters to be spun off into their own movie, rather than let them take up tons of space in the actual New Gods stuff. Just for starters. I mean, you could easily do an entire film just about the fall of the Old Gods and the rise of the Fourth World.

When I heard they were doing a New Gods movie I kind of assumed it would be a Part 1. If it was literally just going to be a single movie that tried to cover "everything"... yeah, that would never have worked. I don't blame them for walking that back, but I also recognize that there's no way that WB is going to pursue ANYTHING right now, in this economy and uncertain future, that demands the kind of real estate a trilogy or series of films would demand. They want "smaller" stuff like Blue Beetle, where if it does well they can do another one and if it does poorly they can just pretend it didn't happen.

I mean, I definitely want to see it happen. It almost has to eventually, the material is too good to waste. But Covid has unfortunately changed the reality of movies like these for the foreseeable future.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I was interested in seeing Darkseid, and Big Barda and Mister Miracle (if they were going to be part of it... was that ever confirmed?), but that's about it.

Also, Ava DuVernay did "A Wrinkle in Time" which did poorly. But that can't entirely be laid at her feet; it's a weird little book that I despise so I'm gonna be a bit skeptical towards her choices anyway.

[Leo656]

In her tweet or post or whatever, Ava mentioned "Barda and Scott" among several other characters she'd been writing for the now-cancelled movie, so one can safely assume that they were part of the plan, yes.

Although one could argue that they're a bit too "conventional super-hero" for something like this project. Like out of all the Fourth World characters, Scott and Barda are pretty much just "regular" super-heroes, other than the fact that they're more or less refugees from the Fourth World. Some of their stories would fit more of a "domesticated", sitcom-type feel than anything as "epic" as what New Gods would suggest.

Therefore, I'd have them be in a spin-off that was more of a conventional super-hero movie. They're part of the lore, you can't leave them out. But as far as the actual "saga" of the Fourth World, it's much more about Darkseid, Hightfather, Orion and Kalibak. Even Metron is more important in the big picture than Barda or Mr. Miracle.

Something called "New Gods" and based on the Fourth World mythology should have a huge, gigantic, epic feel to it, like a rock opera in outer space. Everything should be over-the-top bombast dialed up to 11, like the actual Kirby comics were. Smaller characters like Mr. Miracle and Lightray would honestly be more clutter than anything in the initial film. They need to be involved, but again, that's what sequels and (more appropriately) spin-offs are for. If there's one thing Kirby's New Gods stuff was NOT, it was "conventional super-hero fare".

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

I was interested in seeing Darkseid, and Big Barda and Mister Miracle (if they were going to be part of it... was that ever confirmed?), but that's about it.

Also, Ava DuVernay did "A Wrinkle in Time" which did poorly. But that can't entirely be laid at her feet; it's a weird little book that I despise so I'm gonna be a bit skeptical towards her choices anyway.

I love that book. I've wanted a true first edition of that book for years. It's right up there with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for me in my book collection, although as an aside - I don't know if you've ever read it, but DADOES is not actually a well written book. I swear it's written as if a ten year old wrote it. Things just.... happen.

AWIT is incredibly well written though.

As for the AWIT movie? I didn't see it. Bimbo Larsen told me it wasn't made for me. So, no ca$h there.