Charles Roven Explains How Characters Will Evolve In DC Comics Movie Universe

"It does feel like some are just packaging and they’re not trying hard enough because they know it’s a bankable formula," Nicholas Hoult recently observed about comic book movies, and he’s not wrong. With cinemas bracing themselves for an increased output in superhero tentpoles that are slated to keeping coming in big numbers through 2020 and beyond, ensuring that audiences stay involved is key, and that means the pictures will have to be more than spectacle. Marvel has already proven they have found an approach that works, but can Warner Bros. follow in their footsteps? "Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice" will launch a new universe for moviegoers to explore, and Atlas Entertainment President and Founder Charles Roven explains how it will be structured.

"We’ve got this sandbox of DC characters, and we are hoping to create—this series of movies that we’ve announced are somewhat interlinked. The characters move at a throughline that hopefully will take us all the way to ‘Justice League 2,’ but they also can interact in the other films as well in some way," he told Collider.

"For example, ‘The Flash‘ movie or the ‘Aquaman‘ film is gonna come out after ‘Justice League,’ it’s not gonna be a completely different character; that character will have evolved from ‘Justice League,’ " he continued. "Wonder Woman, when we see her in Justice League, will have evolved from ‘Batman v Superman.’ Unless we decide that in one of these stories we’re gonna do something that happened in the past and have it be more of an origin story, in which case you’ll realize how that character became what they were in the movie that they were first introduced."

That may sound like the kind of thing we’ve seen before from Marvel, but it does seem like WB doesn’t want to go down the origin story road if they don’t have to, and instead, create an environment where these stories are already happening, and invite audiences into them. And that’s certainly something a bit different.

Roven also revealed the brain trust that is creating the vision for the films that lay ahead. Zack Snyder, producer Deborah Snyder, writer Geoff Johns and Warner Bros VP John Berg are part of the team that includes Roven who will determine the future of the DC Comics world.

They have a big job ahead, and the responsibility of potentially earning billions of dollars, and next year we’ll see if they’re start on the right foot with ‘Batman v Superman.’