The news surfaced last week about a potential Joker origin story film that would be under a new banner from Warner Bros. where it wouldn’t be tied to the continuity side of their DC Comics films. A little more has now surfaced as Variety has some hints of what the intent is behind it. While there’s a real draw to continuity stories as we’ve seen from both Marvel and Lucasfilm with their respective works, Warner is looking at this as a way to draw in top talent without having them beholden to the beast that is continuity.
According to the piece, “the banner is intended to give the studio the chance to expand the canon with unusual story angles” while also allowing for more “auteur-driven” films that would open up the creativity and involve some offbeat characters as well if things succeed well enough.
“‘Wonder Woman’ catapulted the brand,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore. “Why not change the rules a little bit in an effort not only to create their own identity but to have even greater success in the marketplace?”
And again, if this can bring about some interesting projects from the Elseworlds brand like Red Son and others, well, I’m all on board.
Naturally, there’s plenty of people who will talk about confusing movie viewers but there are also many that only watch a portion of the continuity-driven films and manage just fine, similar to how there are also TV and animated versions that exist separate from the film franchises. Sometimes you just have to do something different alongside educating the viewers or just writing some of them off in terms of their understanding of this rather than coddling them.
