If I were a guessing man, I would guess that seeing Marvel dominate the box office with a film based on the obscure Guardians of the Galaxy got them a bit nervous. Captain America has been well-established within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has become a crowd favourite, with many holding his second installment as one of Marvel's best films. If Marvel manages to do so well with the Guardians, then maybe the famous Captain could even take out Batty and Supes. DC decided that the potential risk of losing wasn't worth it, and instead moved their film forward two months, to March 25th.
This isn't really all that surprising, except for maybe such a big superhero blockbuster debuting in March, but what is more surprising is the news immediately following this. DC and Warner Brothers planted flags for nine "Untitled DC Films" from 2016 to 2020, and two "Untitled WB Event Films" in 2018 and 2020. If we can assume Dawn of Justice is a "WB Event Film" it seems that they're planning on doing a giant picture every second year, opposed to Marvel's Avengers series which is every three years. That's nice and good, but there's also the nine other films. An untitled DC film in 2016, two in 2017, two in 2018 (in addition to the event film), two in 2019, and then another two in 2020 (again, in addition to the event film). Marvel has eight dates planted from 2016 to 2019, where DC has nine. But DC goes even further as Marvel has yet to announce anything for 2020.
No matter how you look at it it just sounds crazy. DC can have the best plan in the world for all I know, but they are going out there and announcing all these dates after just one installment of their multi-franchise franchise. Sure Man of Steel did alright enough at the box office, but it was hardly well received or well remembered. Not to mention that they just two years before that again tried to boot a franchise with Green Lantern. Which was a complete failure, making DC reconsider their plans all together. That just makes this seem like a desperate hand grabbing at all the dates they can get, but maybe that is just the way things are going?
People have been complaining about Marvel's flag planting for a while. We get to know the dates of films long before there are titles, and they swoop in to grab exciting dates when other films back out. This could all just be a push from DC to secure dates before Marvel, regardless of any plans of actually releasing films on those dates. If this does indeed predict a more intense future trend, I hope it dies between Marvel and DC warring out. Marvel has dates planted five years into the future, and DC six years into the future. I wouldn't be all too surprised if that ended up in studios claiming tempting dates close to a decade into the future just because it's a good one. Which could change the entire game. Instead of actually having to get people to come see your film because it looks good, you could make people come see your film because the premiere date is already full, and it's a date where historically a lot of people watch films. It could be easy to turn me around though, to get me to like this. Just release the titles. If you have so detailed plans that you can announce dates six years into the future, you must have some idea of what films to put there. It might be difficult for studios making non-franchise films to announce titles for generic romcoms and action comedies six years into the future, but when you have such famous characters as Marvel and DC does it shouldn't be hard. "Untitled J'onn J'onzz Film" and "Untitled Captain Marvel Film" sounds much better than "Untitled DC Film" and "Untitled Marvel Film".
Here are DC's planted dates:
- Untitled DC Film - August 5th, 2016
- Untitled DC Film - June 23rd, 2017
- Untitled DC Film - November 17th, 2017
- Untitled DC Film - March 3rd, 2018
- Untitled DC Film - July 27th, 2018
- Untitled WB Event Film - November 16th, 2018
- Untitled DC Film - April 5th, 2019
- Untitled DC Film - June 14th, 2019
- Untitled DC Film - April 3rd, 2020
- Untitled WB Event Film - November 20th, 2020
EDIT:
It has been brought to my attention that the WB Event Films could certainly be unrelated to DC. For example being dates for the new films set in the Harry Potter universe.
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