Jeremy here...
Warner Bros possesses a potential, multi-franchise goldmine in their DC Comics properties. If properly exploited, there's no reason Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman and the rest of the gang can't rival Marvel's box office wrecking crew. Getting there, however, has proven to be a massive challenge for the studio, and their current brand-building plan leaves a lot to be desired.
As explained by The Hollywood Reporter's Kim Masters, the WB braintrust, led by CEO Kevin Tsujihara, is essentially auditioning screenwriters for the opportunity to write on projects like WONDER WOMAN and AQUAMAN. They brought in five writers for WONDER WOMAN, and have currently settled on two finalists: Jason Fuchs (PAN) and someone the studio prefers not to reveal (this after replacing Michelle MacLaren with Patty Jenkins as director). For AQUAMAN, they've rounded up Will Beall (GANGSTER SQUAD), Jeff Nichols (MUD) and Kurt Johnstad (300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE) - and if you're wondering what most of these folks have in common, it's that they've worked with WB before and will do what they're told (indie-darling Nichols being the outlier here).
This is a fairly unprecedented approach, and one to which I'm surprised working screenwriters are submitting. The deal is that they each write an Act One based on the same treatment - i.e. they're trying to predict what the studio wants, and writing to that goal (that doesn't sound like fun, but I guess the money must be worth it). That WB has yet to look that far beyond their in-house hacks isn't surprising, but can't they find better hacks? I'm shocked that Beall is back in the running for a DC Comics property after turning in what several reliable sources told me was a disastrously awful JUSTICE LEAGUE script back in 2013. Fuchs hasn't done enough work for me to have an informed opinion on his abilities (he also wrote the fourth ICE AGE film), but I know what Johnstad can do, and that's write a perfectly average screenplay. These are your visionaries?
We all know these people won't be the last writers to get their mitts on these screenplays. Other, more highly skilled writers will be brought in to fix/punch up their scripts while the studio tries to figure out how these individual projects fit into a larger narrative, ala what we might as well call Marvel's "Infinity Gem Saga". Right now, it feels like they're trying to make it click all at once, which is rarely a recipe for success - especially when you rely almost exclusively on medium talent. The one silver lining here: SUICIDE SQUAD. Regardless of what you think of the publicity photos thus far, David Ayer is evidently being given a great deal of creative control on the film. If he delivers an ass-kicker of a movie, perhaps WB will be more willing to hire folks with a little more vision than "Whatever you say, boss." Until then, this all sounds like risk-averse asset management.
