Officially Official: Justice League To Follow Superman vs. Batman, Zach Snyder To Direct, For Real And Officially On The Record This Time. Officially.

Justice League

The Wall Street Journal finally got it on the record. _Justice League_ will follow _Superman vs. Batman_ and Zack Snyder is going to direct it. Ugh.

We heard it [casually mentioned a while back](https://awesomefriday.ca/2014/03/its-officially-official-justice-league-movie-is-happening-officially/) and we’ve had the [new additions to the cast of thousands in Superman vs. Batman](https://awesomefriday.ca/2014/04/ok-then-superman-vs-batman-adds-cyborg-to-the-line-up/), but this time we have [an explicit statement](http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/04/27/warner-bros-details-plans-for-justice-league-movie-exclusive/).

They haven’t confirmed the screen writer yet however David S. Goyer has a three movie deal which includes _Man of Steel_ and _Superman vs. Batman_ so it’s a pretty reasonable assumption that he’ll be the guy.

It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming. I had really hoped that they would pass off directorial duties to someone other than Snyder. I really didn’t like his vision of _Man of Steel_. There’s hope that Goyer may not write but I think that’s a fools hope.

All in all it still seems like DC is going about this all wrong, they’re chasing Avengers money but the reason that The Avengers worked was that the the lead up movies made us care about the characters and the connective tissue between the movies wasn’t big over the top moves like adding one hero to another’s movie. DC seems to think they can skip past that part but I’m not convinced they can do that and still achieve what Marvel has achieved: a universe everyone has bought into.

A few other interesting things from the article, it mentions that the _Man of Steel_ sequel is tentatively titled “_Batman vs. Superman_”. Am I the only one who thinks that they have the order of the names wrong? It is meant to be a _Man of Steel_ sequel — A Superman movie if you will– with Batman in it, not a Batman movie with Superman in it right?

Also, DC is developing Shazam into a movie but it seems like it’s separate from the _Man of Steel_ continuity. That also seems dumb. Part of the charm of the Marvel universe is that the heroes have all kinds of crazy origins. I have a feeling that Shazam (among other properties) not being part of the continuity means everything will be Krypton derived in the Man of Steel-verse and that’s…. well it’s lazy anyway.

Also also, I’m pretty sure that “With the right script, that could be viable. The world is ready for [Wonder Woman]” means “we’re not going to commit to a Wonder Woman film until we see how much Superman vs. Batman makes at least” which is a shame because that’s one thing that Marvel had going for them back in phase one, they didn’t know how it would work out but they committed to the idea.

To paraphrase one of Marvels heroes speaking to a villain, they lack conviction. That’s a shame too because DC seems to have everything they need except for any idea how to do this.

_Superman vs. Batman_ is about to go into production for a 2016 release, _Justice League_ should follow in 2017 or 2018.