DC kills Batgirl movie (1 Viewer)

[Loco Hornet Fan]

Given I did the math, there is a large margin for error but this is the list I used to come up with the numbers. Had covid not happened, that number would be even higher.

List of DC and Marvel films

Excludes short films and fan films but includes TV episodes as films and unofficial adaptations. For the feature films not listed in this, see DC Comics filmography and Marvel Comics filmography. Adventures of Captain Marvel – March 28, 1941 (DC) Spy Smasher – April 4, 1942 (DC) Batman – July...

edfan12.fandom.com

It looks like the majority of that list is made up of animated movies that never went to theaters (and you could add up all of their collective budgets and still not touch the budget of a theatrically released Marvel/DC movie).

There are also some web series (which usually add up to < 30 min total runtime), and several entries whose movies didn’t really have anything to do with Marvel or DC (Kick-arse, Conan, the Red movies, MiB 3, The Lego Movie, etc.)

It also looks like it counts director’s cuts (like “Days of Future Past: The Rogue Cut”, with 17 previously cut minutes added back in) as separate movies.

I won’t argue that superhero movies aren’t taking up a lot of room at the theater, but most of the entries on that list are certainly not the reason other movies aren’t being made.

 

[Loco Hornet Fan]

We're obviously talking about movies that get released in theaters so that list doesn't count. The number of current Marvel and DC movies is under 50, closer to 40.

Around 50 felt right to me (I haven’t actually counted them up).

 

[Zztop]

The shortest possible answer I can give to that question is that Warner Bros. Discovery was the result of AT&T badly overleveraging themselves to purchase Warner Media (parent of Warner Bros., HBO, Turner Broadcasting, etc.), realizing very quickly they did not actually have the capital to operate a movie and TV empire, and Zaslav (then CEO of Discovery) approaching AT&T about merging Warner Media and Discovery and spinning it off into its own company. AT&T gives this the OK because they want out of the entertainment business. So Warner Bros. Discovery is formed, Zaslav is put in charge, and it's spun off into its own company.

Zaslav has almost $200 million in stock in the new company and has a vested interest in keeping it afloat, but there's a major issue: the company is still massively in debt. Zaslav has constantly thrown around the "we've got to cut three billion in expenses" line around since he took control, but some say the real number is closer to 7 billion. Either way, his SOLE goal becomes to cut as much as possible. Anything he can.

The other part to this is his background is in cheap reality TV. It's what built his reputation as a guy that can turn profits. He turned the Discovery Channel from an educational channel into whatever nonsense it is now. He knows how to make money off lowest common denominator crap. He doesn't understand major franchises or prestige TV or movie studios, but he knows those things are all expensive and he can make more money making reality schlock.

So from his point of view, he sees Warner Bros. and HBO Max not as assets, but liabilities. They're too unpredictable. You've got to spend too much money to make anything with them. This is the same reason AT&T spun it all off in the first place. Movie and TV production are expensive. Streaming services and associated original content are expensive.
But the crap he makes for Discovery? That's cheap and makes money. So long term he sees more benefit in shredding HBO Max down to nothing more than a tab that will be merged into Discovery Plus, using it as a glorified library with no original content creation, and moving on his merry way.


The shareholders don't care. They want profit. He can deliver that, he can do what he wants. If he can't, he'll be out. So he's taking a torch and machete to everything and slashing it all to the bone to cut every corner he can, while doubling down on the Discovery reality TV content that worked so well for him before.
It's all really quite sad.

quoting this because

All 68 Titles Unceremoniously Removed from HBO Max (So Far)

Warner Bros. Discovery continues to covertly hack away at HBO Max’s offerings ahead of its catalog merge with Discovery+. “Infinity Train,” “The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo,…

www.indiewire.com

As IndieWire’s Tony Maglio explains: “The content being targeted for removal tends to be shows and movies that are not performing on the service, but have an opportunity for a partial [tax] write off. Content costs can be amortized — or assigned a cost that gets recognized by an entity across multiple years — over the program or film’s expected lifetime. If years on that timeline remain, a company can remove that asset from distribution and use its remaining cost balance to offset taxable income elsewhere.”