DC’s Animated Universe has a reputation for excellence. Be it the shows or the movies, their carefully crafted stories have rarely let fans down. Some of the most popular projects include Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Death of Superman, Batman Beyond, and Justice League. The most recent saga of animated films from the franchise has been the Tomorrowverse, which just added another movie to its catalog.
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One was the seventh addition to this series’ universe and will be followed up by Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, the eighth film to be a part of the new era of animation. Considering just how much fans have been enjoying these films, a recently revealed piece of information may as well shatter their hearts.
The creators of the recently released film revealed that the Tomorrowverse is running on a ticking clock that ends at ten movies.
DC Started The Tomorrowverse on a Ticking Clock
Recently, Butch Lukic and Jim Krieg gave an interview with ScreenRant where they talked about where the Tomorrowverse will be headed with the recent release of Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One. Interestingly enough, the pair revealed their original pitch for the DCAU and the final number of movies that will be released in this saga.
“We already pre-planned this years ago that they [Warner Bros] were basically wanting us to do this universe in 10 movies,” Lukic said. “That’s all we were given.”
Lukic stated that when they were originally coming up with a plan for what to do, they settled on a 10-film deal with Warner Bros. In this concerningly short amount of time, they had to tell a very in-depth and spread-out story, following many characters. He added that this is all that they were given, and they were unable to change the studio’s mind.
Unfortunately, this means that the end of this part of the Tomorrowverse may soon come to an end. However, such a short amount of time raises other concerns as well.
Compromising Quality?
When a franchise has a short, limited amount of time to tell stories, a lot can go wrong, especially for a world as vast as the DC Universe. Storylines and character arcs can feel very rushed, and oftentimes, so much information is thrown at the audience that they almost black out by the time the credits roll around. Adding the huge number of characters in the franchise only makes things worse for them.
It would seem that the effects of all this rushing have already been felt by the creators as Jim Krieg spoke on something along the lines. He started by saying that even though they wanted a 20-movie deal to fully flush out all of the characters, they had to settle on 10 films instead.
“Honestly, we would have been happy to do 20 [movies.] But when you want to do 20, and someone offers you 10, you’d say yes anyway,” Krieg said. “We just had to pack as many characters and arcs into the first seven and the shorts, – don’t forget the shorts they’re germane, and canon to the end.”
He then mentioned that in their compromise, they were forced to crowd all of the characters and their stories into a limited space, just so everyone could get their time in the sun. He also added that the short films, Adam Strange and Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth were also canon and used as a form of plot delivery. Such storytelling is rarely appreciated by fans and was a risky decision on Warner Bros.’s part.
