Geoff Johns is an anomaly in the DC pantheon. He’s a creative force that not only excels at storytelling but he also has done exceptionally well with creative direction and course correcting troubled DC Comics initiatives and characters. He’s been known to “fix” a lot of what wasn’t working for DC’s comics line up which led to his ascencion as Chief Creative Offices within their comic properties. Today I learned that his corporate climb continues with Johns being places in a new role and responsibilities including oversight of films starring DC’s characters:
The Burbank-based studio is making changes to the way it handles its DC Entertainment-centered films, giving oversight of the feature projects to a pair of executives and creating a dedicated division for the films. Current executive vp Jon Berg and Geoff Johns, DC’s chief content officer who successfully launched the comics label’s foray into television, will co-run the newly created DC Films, according to multiple sources.
Johns has written and oversaw some of DC’s most critically acclaimed stories and initiatives over the last decade and beyond. John’s has also been name dropped for his involvement with DC’s well received television initiatives which contributed to the success of Supergirl and The Flash. It’s not completely surprising that Johns has been tapped for input in the cinematic endeavors with these characters he’s had such success with. You can learn more about Johns’ success in the comic book world here, here, and here.
NOW, what does this mean for DC’s current film slate in development and the Zack Snyder murderverse? At the very least this provides some oversight by someone who not only understands the characters and why fans appreciates them, but also truly appreciates the characters himself and their many incarnations. Johns has proven experience taking characters that are fundamentally broken and unappealing to the mass audience and making them successful. In fact he’s done this many times for DC Comics to course correct marquee characters that had waning fan interest with few failures.
Speculation will likely run rampant that Johns’ job is to work this same magic with their cinematic outings. He pretty much unofficially designed the current cinematic incarnation of Batman in a comic book which is, by far, the most positively received aspect of the recent Batman V Superman film. Will he be in a position where he can extend his influence to the DC film slate? Who knows! He’s co-writing a new Batman film with Ben Affleck but It remains to be seen how much muscle he will have compared to Zack Snyder who has pretty much had extensive control on the properties until now (not quite sure what happened to “Godfather” Christopher Nolan).
[THR]
