While there is an inherent rivalry between the Marvel film adaptations and the DC film adaptations, Warner Bros. has taken a few major pages out of Marvel Studios’ book when it comes to crafting its own DC universe. It has the big team-up movie planned with a two-part Justice League event, it announced a full slate of superhero films that includes standalone features and sequels to existing properties, and its entire slate will exist within one singular universe. Something Warner Bros. doesn’t have, though, is a Kevin Feige. As the President of Marvel Studios, Feige produces every single one of Marvel’s films and is essentially the glue that holds the entire universe together. He takes point on plotting out where the overall arc for the MCU will go, and ensures that there is strong connective tissue in each movie.
It’s not that Warner Bros. hasn’t tried to install its own Feige-type creative head, as the studio would’ve loved to have had Christopher Nolan stick around after the Dark Knight Trilogy and oversee the subsequent DC films, but Nolan’s brother Jonathan Nolan—who penned the script for The Dark Knight and co-wrote The Dark Knight Rises—recently confirmed that he and his brother have nothing to do with the upcoming DC Movie Universe. More after the jump.
Speaking with CS in anticipation of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Interstellar, which Jonah co-wrote, Jonah said he and his brother are not involved in the DC films to come:
"I love those guys and my brother was involved in Man of Steel with Zack [Snyder] and David [Goyer]. I kind of feel like that chapter for us is closed."
Jonah did, however, leave the door open to possibly return in the future:
"To be continued somewhere farther down the line?" he asks with a smile. "Maybe."
All of this shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. Christopher Nolan was integral in getting Man of Steel off the ground, as he and David S. Goyer worked out Goyer's take on Superman together during script development on The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan was very involved in producing Man of Steel and signing Snyder as director, but he and his producing partner/wife Emma Thomas are only executive producers on the follow-up Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and while Goyer wrote the initial screenplay on the film, he was subsequently replaced by Chris Terrio.
With Warner Bros. announcing an ambitious slate of DC Comics adaptations to be released over the next six years, Nolan’s connection to that world—Goyer, with whom this whole thing began—appears to be gone, and so there’s really no reason for him to stick around. No doubt WB would love for him to do otherwise, but it really looks like the closest thing the studio has to a Kevin Feige-type overseer is Snyder, who will next be directing Justice League Part One and Justice League Part Two.
This is all probably for the best. I’d much rather have Nolan free to pursue original ideas or wholly different interests instead of being tied down to overseeing a massive interconnected superhero franchise for an indefinite amount of time; he gave us three Batman movies, and I’m pretty satisfied with that. I’m much more eager to see what his next Inception or Interstellar might be rather than another superhero take from the filmmaker.
What say you, readers? Are you disappointed that the Nolans will have no involvement in the upcoming DC slate, or would you rather see them focus on other kinds of projects? Sound off in the comments below.
