Summary
- DC's advantage over Marvel lies in its storytelling approach, according to CEO Casey Bloys.
- Bloys highlights the importance of telling different stories in different styles and avoiding uniformity.
- Warner Bros. Discovery's failure to meet actor demands for The Penguin series is overshadowed by the conversation around Marvel.
Casey Bloys, the HBO and MAX content CEO, stated how DC can stand against Marvel. According to Bloys, DC's advantage over Marvel lies in its storytelling approach.
In the wake of the second DC reboot, Bloys comes out in defense of the past and future DC MAX series. This comes as Warner Bros. Discovery fails to meet the actors’ strike demands, which pushed The Penguin series back to the Fall of 2024. However, rather than Bloys acknowledging the setbacks and failure of WBD to meet the reasonable requests of actors, the conversation is instead framed around Marvel.
In the build-up to The Marvels, the question fans and audiences are asking is if superhero fatigue has set in. Bloys doesn’t know if it's “tentpole fatigue as much as it is a sameness of storytelling." Bloys said (via Deadline), "The key, even within DC, is trying to tell different stories in different styles, to not try to do the same show over and over and over again." He used James Gunn's Peacemaker as an example, expressing that it is a “very different show tonally than The Penguin. So, there’s not a uniformity to the storytelling.” To no surprise, Bloys insinuated that he was referring to Marvel.
As good as their shows are, there’s probably been a lot of them. That’s one of the advantages we have at Warner Bros. Is it’s not just one set of stories. There’s a lot of stories you can go to.
Bloys' comments on DC's advantage over Marvel arrive after being called out by Rolling Stone and admitting to using fake bot accounts on social media to antagonize audiences that publicly criticize HBO shows. Previously, Bloys is believed by some to have used Rolling Stone to spread rumors about the Zack Snyder fanbase using bot tactics to help Zack Snyder's Justice League win an Oscar fan vote. The Wrap reported on analytics supporting this claim, but The Academy disputed such allegations and stood by the results. DC fans are pointing their fingers at Bloys for the toxic discourse within the community.
Blanket statements that separate DC from Marvel are easy to suggest amid MCU criticisms, nor should it be forgotten that WB has thrown many of its DC directors under the bus to replicate the Marvel formula that Bloys now criticizes. While Peacemaker is sure to be tonally different from The Penguin, those two series don’t exist in the same connected universe, unlike the MCU series, and Peacemaker is still only one example compared to the various amounts of content that the MCU has produced. WBD has yet to prove itself after 10 years of what some fans perceive as self-sabotage that has now led to audiences walking out of Aquaman 2 test screenings in the wake of continuous box office flops for DC.
DC is a brand of superhero comics, television shows, movies, video games, merchandise, and more. The company owns the rights to popular characters like Batman, The Suicide Squad, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, and many more.
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Source: Deadline, Rolling Stone, The Wrap