Earning everything from raves to pans, but mostly reviews in-between, Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel arrives in theaters this Thursday night (read my review here) on the back of a whole lot of marketing. The anticipation is through the roof, but with a reported budget of $225 million you’re looking at a film that’s got to make north of $525 million before it’s profitable at the worldwide box office and that may be generous given how much money WB is spending to market the thing all across the globe.
The studio almost seems to be willing a hit into existence, something they hoped Christopher Nolan‘s name, attached as a producer and given story credit, would help provide. Now, they’re letting fans know they aren’t just stopping at one… So I guess we better go see the first one.
Deadline.com reports both Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer will be back for Man of Steel 2. Goyer’s deal is reportedly part of a three-picture deal that included the first film, the sequel and also the much-talked-about Justice League movie that would bring DC’s superheroes together, from Batman and Superman to Wonder Woman and The Flash, in the same fashion as Marvel’s The Avengers.
Nolan’s role isn’t expected to be as hands on, stepping into merely a limited role as producer as he works on his own projects, which includes his upcoming film Interstellar.
And the sequels don’t stop there as director Jon M. Chu will return after directing G.I. Joe: Retaliation to helm G.I. Joe 3 for Paramount and MGM.
No word on which characters will return, but I’m pretty sure we can expect Dwayne Johnson back in the mix.
The Joe pick-up is interesting to me as the sequel wasn’t exactly a major hit, bringing in $365.5 million worldwide on a $130 million budget. The result isn’t much better than 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which had a lengthy production process leading to its $175 million budget. What’s interesting about it is that the theatrical numbers for both this and Man of Steel are only half the story with studios making big numbers on action figures, lunch boxes and so forth. In other words, the movie and its quality hardly matter.
MORE: Read my review of Man of Steel here.
