For those who dug Hal Jordan and Diana Prince’s animated adventures… Bruce Timm has some bad news for you.
In an interview with Think McFly Think at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, Timm said that slow sales are grounding any sequels to the Wonder Woman and Green Lantern animated features to a halt.
“We had originally planned to do sequels for Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, but Wonder Woman’s sales started out extremely slow and then over time were eventually able to catch up to probably Justice League Frontier,” Timm said. “The execs decided because it wasn’t able to sell quickly right away, where as Justice League was, that there wouldn’t be any more female super hero films right now. We were developing and hoping to get started on a Batgirl film based on Year One, but because of Wonder Woman’s slow sales start, that won’t be happening now.”
Timm was a bit more hopeful when it came to Hal Jordan, considering the Ryan Reynolds film is due out soon. “With Green Lantern, it didn’t perform nearly as well as what they had hoped it would. In the long run it eventually made its money back, but the sales weren’t there right away during its release. Hopefully with the release of the Live Action film next year, that will open up the doors for more Green Lantern relate material.”
What’s interesting to me about this statement is the Wonder Woman quote — namely, that it reflects on female superheroes more than it does the individual character. I’m curious, what are the financial standards for these films, in the first place? Because they’re straight-to-DVD, it’s clear they won’t be getting the same sorts of marketing attention or even cash flow opportunities that a traditional film would. (In the age of Redbox, you can rent these things for a dollar a pop. How many copies would that sell?) And specifically in the case of Wonder Woman, is it because of her status as “the first” that’s keeping other female superheroes at bay? What say you, ‘Rama readers?
April 28th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Sadly, I’d have to agree with DC/Warner. If Wonder Woman can’t perform well, then most other female superheroes probably couldn’t. Word of mouth buzz certainly didn’t help Wonder Woman. When I first read this I thought “Oh yeah Wonder Woman DID have a straight to DVD release, didn’t she?” I had completely forgotten that this had existed after hearing about it… once? Twice? That’s not a good thing to hear from someone that reads a lot of comics blogs and comic news sites.
The Green Lantern cartoon on the other hand had fairly consistent, if not loud, buzz.
April 28th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Pure sexism.
Why not cancel all male superhero videos since Green Lantern failed to succeed? Doesn’t that mean videos with male leads fail, using this pi$$-poor logic?
Batgirl has a HUGE fan base, arguable bigger than Green Lantern. Anything with a Bat does.
Love WW but she’s a hard sell for insecure fanboys. Batgirl doesn’t have the same stigma.
Either way, it’s the same old sexism.
April 28th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
I can see postponing sequels indefinitely, but can’t get the idea of putting off any other female lead work. These things are evergreen and great for double-dipping. Sounds like Wonder Woman eventually sold enough, it just didn’t fly off the shelves. It will continue to sell. It will likely get packaged in a DVD set, as well. So, eventually, you’d think it could make a case for a sequel. But, in the meantime, you have a Bat character that would possibly sell more out of the gate and be just as evergreen.
April 28th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Maybe they could make them good. The Green Lantern one was pretty boring.
April 28th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
The biggest problem, for me, is that quite frankly these movies generally haven’t been all that good. None of them have been as good as the JL/JLU series (or Batman or Superman: TAS) was in its best moments… At the very least, they’re not worth $15-$20 a pop. None of the DCUA releases are something I’ll go back to over and over again, so why blow the dough? I know that, eventually, they’ll all get shown on Cartoon Network anyhow.
David’s correct when he talks about the age of Redbox, not to mention Netflix. Now I can stream stuff from them and not spend anymore than my monthly Netflix fee. In the past, I would borrow these DVDs from my local library and check them out. None of them really knocked my socks off, and one viewing was enough.
Anyhow, it sounds like Wonder Woman eventually sold well enough. Who cares if it started slowly? It was the best of all the DCUA movies that I saw, so good reviews and word of mouth built it up. That’s a positive that WB/DC should be building on. But, whatever. I don’t expect smart decisions out of anything involving DC these days… Not unless it’s a live action film with Chris Nolan’s involvement.
April 28th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Sad thing is, Joe, the WW movie was pretty decent. Not spectacular, but good. The GL animated movie was pretty lousy though… Hopefully the live action movie will fare much better.
April 28th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
I agree with Shaun — I’ve seen all the recent DC animated films and only really enjoyed WONDER WOMAN. I eventually bought it used for about $5 from an Amazon seller. FIRST FLIGHT and NEW FRONTIER were disappointing. I’m not sure why they’d expect a mediocre product to be highly successful, regardless of which character is featured.
April 29th, 2010 at 5:48 am
I like all the DC animated movies so far. It’s great that they feature less used characters in their own features. I’m just disappointed there won’t be more of them in future. Right now anything that features Superman, Batman or Justice League will have success in sales. Case in point – the next feature will be Batman: Under The Red Hood. So far we’ve had Justice League Crisis On Two Earths earlier in the year which leaves us one more feature in the fall.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:21 am
Meh… So far they’ve all been either movies based on lousy stories to begin with (Public Enemies, I’m looking at you) or they’ve been watered-down takes on stories that were better in print. They’ve all been rushed, much too short, and character development has been non-existent. Again, none of these movies has had the charm of the Timm-verse TV shows from the past two decades. They just aren’t worth the money.
Oh, and I’ve ranted about this before, but when they’re doing the Justice League or at least using the big guns (Supes, Bats, etc.) would it kill them to get the likes of Kevin Conroy and either Tim Daly or George Newbern every time? Clancy Brown, Carl Lumbly, all those guys (and ladies!)… Keep the voices consistent, with proven voice actors, and that might help the characterization. I’ve never been a fan of animated films loading up on celebs. They aren’t necessarily the best choices for the parts.
The most ambitious of the movies was Gotham Knight, and I had high hopes for that one. Parts of it were brilliant, and parts of it, sadly, were terrible. I thought the last two vignettes were fantastic, however, and could be launching points for more Bat-anime features, OR perhaps a Gotham Knight TV series.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:35 am
I’ve enjoyed the movies in varying degrees but I’ve been spoiled by Batman TAS so I’d rather see a new Justice League
April 29th, 2010 at 8:55 am
I agree with Shaun, use the voices that we know and love. I’ve enjoyed hearing certain voices but the voices from the Timmverse are almost perfect, why reinvent the wheel?
April 29th, 2010 at 9:13 am
I think the WW was one of the best movies of last year, honestly.
April 30th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
This obviously is a direct effect of the new “direction” of DC Entertainment and any projects greenlighted under the old regime probably will die now.
I can still them doing animated movies but if Under the Hood has slow sales, it will be even bleaker for the future of DC animated movies.
Plus this says something about Green Lantern. It still really isn’t in the mainstream yet like Batman or some of the other Marvel properties and is probably focused on hardcore comic readers at the moment. You have to wonder if that live action movie has legs.
April 30th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
It’s pretty obvious to me that the highter ups at DC WB have no idea what they are talking about. According to Tim the GL made it’s money back but because it didn’t sell incredible well now it doesn’t get a sequel. What kind of logic is that, if anything they should take that as a postive considering that the GL movie was yet origin story, can you imagine what a SCW animated feature would do?.
If they want better sales how about they keep promoting other heroes aside from the already well known Batman/Superman/JLA. Because the more you show stories with these other heroes the more people will find out that they are cool and the WB will make more money. But by doing the opposite all you are doing is deluding you’re brand by shoving already popular heroes down people’s throats and ignoring potential hits.
I’m so glad that Johns is taking over these idiots departments because they have no clue what they are doing. We need somebody that is going to promote these other heroes and introduce them to the masses and not keep putting out Batman/Superman stuff which I and others could care less about.
May 3rd, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Whatever happened to “if at first you don’t succeed”, “keep hammering”, or “snowball effect.” All of it is wasted if TPTB just quit. The live/CGI Green Lantern film next year would benefit from a sequel and, given the unlikelihood of a WW live action film anytime soon, a sequel to the animated film makes all the sense in the world as far as building on her exposure.
For what it’s worth, I’ve started a petition.
http://www.petitiononline.com/Batman22/petition.html
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Oh, I think GL will have “legs” as long as the movie’s good… I mean, is GL honestly any less known than Iron Man was before the movie two years ago? I don’t think many expected it to be quite as big as it was… But it was a damned fun movie with a great cast that fired on pretty much every cylinder. If the GL movie can capture that same kind of lightning in its bottle, and take it as seriously as Favreau & Co. did, it’ll do big business.
I don’t think GL has as charismatic a cast as Iron Man did, but the franchise still has the potential to be a sort of Star Wars for the 21st century… A big sci-fi/space opera epic. I hope everyone involved is up to the task.
The GL animated movie, by comparison, just wasn’t terribly exciting. It wasn’t necessarily awful, just pedestrian and dull. Many of the DCUA movies have had that problem. “One and done” for most of them.
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