CCXP 2019 - Birds Of Prey & Wonder Woman 1984 Soar (and other DC Movies spoilers)

Yeah, there's kind of a lot to cover here with both Birds Of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984 dominating big time at Brazil Comic Con (known as CCXP) last week, but there's also some other DC movie related stuff I haven't covered in a while, so this blog is going to touch on nearly all of it as best as possible.

My life probably hasn't been what you think it has. We all have our struggles. 

On Sunday, both Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins took to the stage at CCXP and to say the panel for Wonder Woman 1984 (June 5th 2020) was a success would be underselling it but damn, it really was. The anticipation for this movie has been brewing for months and after eighteen months since it began filming, we finally got a trailer for the film and it damn well nearly broke the internet and gave us enough strong hints of the plot for Diana Prince's second solo outing. While we didn't see our villain Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig) fully transform as Cheetah we certainly got hints of the main plot surrounding other baddie, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) and the return of one Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is definitely not what it seems. Embracing the 80's vibe with the styling and colour palette, we got to see some great stunts, touching reunions, hints of darkness, our titular heroine put through her paces and a flashback to Themyscira. Tonally this is definitely different from the first movie but not in a bad way whatsoever. I seriously cannot wait to see this movie and I love the tagline of A New Era Of Wonder Begins.

WW84 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfM7_JLk-84

Now three days prior, the Birds Of Prey (February 7th 2020) themselves took to the stage with all our main female cast and director Cathy Yan and the audience went wild for them. Back in October a trailer for this movie was released to general audiences and it was excellent. However CCXP got an exclusive second trailer, which will be released early next year as well as the opening scene to the movie. There's no denying that this movie has generated a certain degree of division and controversy as it's definitely playing around with usual canons but the general consensus was that the audiences loved what they saw and it seems like we're going to get an even amount of screen time for our characters, even Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn will be an unreliable narrator and a certain plot involving Ewan McGregor's Black Mask has been changed. As the tagline says though - Mind Over Mayhem. 

Birds Of Prey Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGM4uYZzfu0

Outside of the events of CCXP, there's also been the several news items over the last few months ....

Back in September and to coincide with filming, writer/director James Gunn announced the cast for The Suicide Squad (August 6th 2021), which will serve as a sequel and kind of reboot to the 2016 movie. The movie will see Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman and Jai Courtney reprise their roles from the first film but they will be joined by a lot of cast members, whose actual roles have yet to be properly disclosed, though Idris Elba is rumoured to be playing Vigilante. Gunn also pointed out not to get attached to a lot of these characters and we'll see both him and Matt Reeves at CCXP next year as they promote The Suicide Squad and The Batman (June 25th 2021) respectively.

Last month it was announced that for the first time in 2021, the DCEU will have three movies instead of the usual one or two from previous year. The third movie in question with a December 22nd 2021 release penciled in will be Black Adam, starring Dwayne Johnson/The Rock as the title villain turned antihero. Johnson wrote up a pretty passionate post on the character when announcing the movie, which will be directed by Jaume Collet-Serra from a script written by Adam Sztykiel and will also feature characters such as the Justice Society of America. Filming for the movie will commence in July 2020. I have to admit to having mixed feelings on this one.As a character, I would've preferred Black Adam had debuted in a Shazam! sequel but there's no doubting that The Rock's mass appeal will ensure that this movie is a big hit for the DCEU.

The Rock's Black Adam Announcement: https://www.instagram.com/p/B42odCrFF42/?hl=en

As for the future of the DCEU - well, we've had some more casting announcements for The Batman (due to begin filming early next year) but that will get another blog dedicated to it later in the month. Aquaman's second movie will be coming out on December 16th 2022. However recently revealed was that a Shazam! sequel will now be released on April 1st 2022 while The Flash will also be released on July 1st 2022. There was also an announcement of sorts of a potential movie centering on the Amazons with Patty Jenkins producing and a third Wonder Woman may come out in 2023 or 2024. Currently Superman is still up in the air even though Henry Cavill clearly wants to play the role yet again while there might be a DC movie coming to HBO Max. Oh and there's another topic I've been avoiding but now seems the time to give it some attention, so let's power through this next bit, shall we?

Ah yes, the Zack Snyder Cut of Justice League. The thing that of course exists (that's not a debate, we've seen enough Vero stuff to know it actually exists) and has generated some of the worst (and occasionally best) examples of fan behavior. In the last few months, it's been a campaign that's intensified with some cast members (Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa and Ray Fisher) voicing their support on the matter and even the likes of Subway giving away 15,000 sandwiches to the homeless but whether or not the film will get a release is still very much up in the air. No one can say for certainty that it will or it won't but if it does, then HBO Max would seem the obvious place to release it before eventually giving it a digital and physical release. Either way, regardless of this Cut seeing the light of day, it's ever clear the WB and DC want to move on from Zack Snyder's era. Releasing Snyder's intended version would help with that for some fans but for everyone else, there's eight movies coming out in the next three years and several more in various stages of development, so in spite of a rocky start, the end result is the same: the DCEU is going nowhere.

Oh and #ReleaseTheSnyderCut so we really can move the hell on already. Which upcoming DCEU movie are you looking forward to and which one would you like to see in the future?