The Week In A Bad Education Towers #22

Another busy week but one of productivity (kinda) as a finished video is exporting in another window as we speak. How does a monthly video schedule sound? Do-able? Probably not, but we'll see.

So James Gunn, once Mr Guardians of The Galaxy, is now in charge of the DCU films and dropped this on the internet last week:

Just in case twitter collapses or starts charging you to embed tweets here's a link to what was announced. Its a lot of stuff so lets dig through it!

So they aren't going full slash and burn like other parts of the company so we're getting the current slate of films: the Shazam sequel, the Flash film (somehow), the Aquaman sequel, the Blue Beetle film, another Matt Reeves Batman and the Joker sequel. That does make sense, especially given how successful those last 2 films were. The interesting bit here was how stuff outside of the main 'story' would be labelled DC Elseworlds, which is a brand thats been knocking around the comics for a long old time. Its similar to how Star Wars decided loads of stuff was Legends rather than canon when the sequels were ramping up. There's a whole conversation to be had there around if anyone cares about canon but in this post MCU-world everyone wants their brands to be all regimented and in order so we are where we are

An animated show, written by Gunn? Sign me up, although not much detail with the main take away being how characters would move between live action and animated with the same actors voicing them in animation. Which Marvel kind of did with the What If...? series, but this was prefaced with "usually" which gives them a bit of an out.

A TV show starring Viola Davis featuring Team Peacemaker? Yes please, I loved Gunn's Suicide Squad which carried straight over to the Peacemaker TV series. There was no news about that, but Gunn did say that this list of stuff wasn't a definitive list of whats being worked on so fingers crossed for season 2 and another opening dance sequence

This is a big one, and the film that Cavill didn't fit with. It also was the only thing they announced with a release date, which was July 11th 2025 making it my birthday film of the year. Whilst Gunn was talking about it they showed the cover for All Star Superman, Grant Morrison's Superman masterpiece:

Not clear at all how much, if any, of that will be adapted but if Gunn is using that for the tone of the film then I'm all in. Superman should be clear blue skies, not snapping necks. Not clear yet if Gunn is directing either but given that release date we should be getting more details soon.

A premier HBO Max TV show? Hal Jordan and John Stewart? True Detective with Green Lanterns? Yep. Yep, I'm in.

Now this got a proper "saw WHAT" out of me when it was announced. This is a real out of left field choice, especially considering its only in the last few years that these characters were put into the main DC comics. Originally published by WildStorm, its one of the most influential comics of its time, maybe all time. Created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, its about a team of superheroes looking to change the world for the better by any means necessary. It was a bombastic action filled comic with the aesthetic of a Micheal Bay film, a style which was coined as 'widescreen comics'. This was seen in other comics, most famously another Bryan Hitch drawn series The Ultimates which was a reinvention of the Avengers. This comic was one of the main visual influences of what became the MCU, from the casting of Samuel L Jackson to how Captain America looked. So there's a direct through line from The Authority to the biggest movie franchise of the 21st Century. How it will be adapted to the big screen is anybody's guess but the fact that they're even trying is amazing. Might get a video out of this to dig into this in a bit more detail, so thats something to look forward to

A Game of Thrones style series TV series about the island where Wonder Woman came from? Invoking GoT doesn't excite me but should still be interesting

Obviously, the fact that this isn't going to be a new version of the fantastic animated series was deeply disappointing. It sounds like it's going to be a movie take on Grant Morrison's (that name again!) Batman and Robin series which introduced Batman's son Damien Wayne as Robin. Them were good comics so its a great place to take inspiration from, again no news of casting or anything like that

Another interesting pick, and another TV show which should fit the character well. He's not one I've spend a huge amount of time with, but he was a large part of the Justice League International series of the 80s which has a lot of fans

This was described as a big science fiction epic film, based on Tom King’s recent run on the character. Not read it, but hopefully they'll invoke the opening ten minutes of Man of Steel for this. Honestly, that opening on Krypon is probably the best this from that whole period

Ending on this was a bit strange, no details if this was a film or show or what. There has been a recent show which is meant to be good, not sure how close it was to the Alan Moore stories from the 80s. This was described as a very dark horror story, which fits in with Moore's take on the character but we'll see when more details of this comes out.

So thats a lot of stuff! And it all sounds interesting, and thats the main thing I took away; I'm not beholden to a specific brand despite always being a bit more of a Marvel fan growing up. I just like going to the cinema to watch a great film, which hopefully is what we'll be getting with this stuff and whatever else they have cooking away in the background.

Thats more than enough writing for one day, hopefully by next week I might have watched something in a cinema but we’ll see.

Anyways, bye!