One, you have to remember it isn't DC cancelling these things, its Warner's film division. Two, Warner is in a big shakeup, after the Discovery merger and are cutting costs left and right to make up for the money spent in the merger. This is the modern corporate world: muscle into another business, buy it up, sell off pieces for a fast profit, take the money core and get as much mileage as you can, then rinse and repeat.

It's all venture capital mentality, which is about quick turnaround profit, any way possible, then use that as collateral to finance the next acquisition for the portfolio. Then, use hose companies to counteract one and entice others to invest money into things, to further fuel the cycle.

Warner has been a cluster-@#$% of a company, for the past 40 years. In its favor, it has a lot of intellectual property that make great cash cows and not just DC. However, they have run their conglomerate more like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with a lot of competing little Balkan states and little real unity of purpose. That is where Disney has it all over them. Disney is about everyone rowing in the same direction, from the top down.

Warner is the same company that was distributing Babylon 5, but didn't think it was a good idea to cross market it with books, toys and comic books, like the competing Star Trek. Joe Straczynski had to go out on his own and secure book deals and comic book deals (and eventually toys). Warner didn't, say, put promos on their own networks to say, hey, there is this cool sci-fi show on your local tv, brought to you by our company, with effects that blow away anything you will see on Star Trek and some really cool stories. Nope; they didn't do @#$% until they moved it to TNT (and amazing how ratings and repeats went through the roof when you start to promote this stuff).

Warner's attitude in exploiting DC properties is we keep the movie distribution deal and let some other schmuck do all the grunt work of filming it. That was fine for Batman movies, until Joel Schumacher made a hash of it (though they still made enough money on merchandising to offset the dropping box office). That is how you can get George Clooney for Batman and Shaquille O'Neal for Steel. They let independent producers, with deals with Warner, buy up the film rights to properties, with the proviso that Warner distributes them as they see fit. So, Joel Silver ends up with a bunch of properties and sits on them, for years.

Meanwhile, Marvel's bosses did kind of the same thing, because they were so desperate to get their properties on tv and movies that they cut deals with all kinds of people, to the point Spider-man ended up in litigation for most of 10 years. However, they sold off the biggest names they had, which meant Spidey, Hulk (because of the tv series) X-Men and fantastic Four. And nothing happens for a decade, in most cases. We get a direct-to-video Punisher (in title only, really, as the film could have been any generic vigilante in a random cannon movie) and a Captain America so embarrassing that it is only seen on bootleg tapes at comic conventions, in the US. They cut a deal with Fox, to do some tv pilots, which give us Generation X and Nick Fury, with the Hoff (which is at least cheesy fun). Finally, by the end of the 90s, the X-Men get going and it turns out fairly well. Then, Spidey gets sorted and Sam Raimi turns out something that captures the right look and tone (plastic Goblin masks notwithstanding) and things are looking up. So, the recently restructured Marvel, under Ike Perlmutter has Avi Arad, who was partners with Permutter. He wants to get into Hollywood. Marvel's money is going to pay off their bankruptcy debt to Perlmutter. Then, they get this big influx of cash from the films; but they aren't get the lion's share. Arad pitches the idea (or latches onto someone else's idea) to form their own production company and produce the films they want, with their remaining name characters (mostly the Avengers-related characters). They get a studio to back the production and then get a bigger chunk of the profits. They partner with Paramount and suddenly the MCU is born. Since they are producing all of this, they keep control over the direction, which means a singular vision. Once Disney buys the company and Ike goes off to enjoy warm beaches, Avi gets to schmooze while Kevin Feige continues to build this with Disney money bankrolling it. Disney wants the male youth market and now has properties to feed it and goes to town with it.

Warner, true to form, sees Disney and Marvel reaping in the bucks and decides they have to do the same thing and puts the worst possible people to do this, because they no squat about doing movies and too many people are involved in decisions, still. DC has been relegated to IP maintenance, because no one cares about comic book publishing, just slap them on t-shirts and video games and get me a movie franchise. So, hey, Zack Snyder likes comics; let him do it. Except, he couldn't tell a story if he was reading the Brothers Grimm to his 5 year-old. So, it's a hot mess of dark, nihilistic mess and fans reject it, in large part, because who wants a dark Superman? Batman is mostly kept out of their hands, because no one wants to F that up, like everything else. Wonder Woman is good for one film, then they were out of ideas (hint: don't kill off the love interest in the first film). Meanwhile, the TV people are mostly working from the same playbook, so there is better consistency. Also, they have to be more story-oriented and can deliver something closer to the experience of comic books, because they can ration it out across a season, rather than shoehorn it into 120 minutes.

So, what you end up with, at Warner, is too many chiefs and not enough indians (if you will forgive a non-PC phrase) and everyone running in every direction.

Just turn it over to Bruce Tim and the animated folks, since they have the best track record with DC, as a whole, to a mass audience. Not animated films; but, let them produce this stuff. James Gunn? With quirky stuff like Suicide Squad or Peacemaker? maybe. Not so sure about Superman and Wonder Woman (like he is getting his hands on Batman in any major way).

I'd be ecstatic to be proven wrong; but, I have enough experience with how Warner has managed DC properties to be pretty damn cynical. Besides; I'm old and cranky and not the audience, so I can lob hand grenades at them and watch the youngsters wet themselves. You gotta have some fun.

I’d probably make a case for Batman (and I have a soft spot or 1984’s Supergirl), but on the wider point of not having a clue, I agree.

It’s frustrating. As I said in my topic, Hollywood has a history of failed/cancelled projects. Hell, one movie magazine here used to have an entire page devoted to “development hell”. It just feels like WB seem to want to enter the Guinness World Records as having the most cancelled/failed projects in a 15-year-time span.

I have conditioned myself to ignore the clickbait YouTube suggestions, but even some official sources are inconsistent. It seems that for the last 12 months, we’ve seen rotating reports of Henry Cavill will return as Superman to Henry Cavill is definitely out as Superman. I suppose they’ll announce a solo Superman film soon - and then that’ll be cancelled.

At least when the likes of the Indiana Jones movies were in “limbo”, you had a feeling that something was brewing - and you’d get it eventually.

I suppose, in this messed-up Bizarro World we’re currently living in, that someone like Antennae Lad will get a solo movie - or two - before we see a solo Superman film.

For me nowadays, WCW is a verb, meaning to illogically screw something up and lose yourself money down the road, potentially. 

An absolute joke.

At least the likes of the Salkinds had a vision back in the day…