When WarnerBros. blazoned back in 2018 that Ava DuVernay had inked on to direct a New Gods film penned by ridiculous book pen Tom King, the news was interesting — if only for the pledge of the creative platoon potentially bringing the likes of Mister Miracle, Big Barda, and Granny Goodness to the tableware screen. While it first sounded as if New Gods was coming together in the time after WarnerBros.’ original advertisement, the plant changed its tune before this time New Gods would n’t have been the first time the DCEU’s focus turned to Apokolips, but it might have spent further time digging into occupants other than Darkseid, who was meant to be featured in 2017’s Justice League but was replaced by Steppenwolf in Joss Whedon’s interpretation. When WB took New Gods and James Wan’s The Trench (which was actually a secret Black Manta design) off its product slate, it sounded possible that the decision was incompletely driven by Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the long-rumored director’s cut, where Darkseid did play a large part.
From the sound of recent commentary DuVernay’s made about what went down with New Gods, that may have been the case. During an interview on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM show last week, DuVernay explained how, after subscribing onto her overall development deal with WarnerBros. in 2018, she incontinently began looking into the plant’s roster of DC Comics IP, and linked the New Gods as characters she was interested in. “ I loved New Gods, which is the design that got removed,” DuVernay said. “ The plant decided that they didn’t want to pursue a certain part of that ridiculous world, grounded on some effects that were going on with another film in that world According to DuVernay, she was n’t indeed suitable to completely finish working on New Gods’ script with King before Warner pulled the draw, and the director’s reference to “ another film in that world” appears to be about Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the only other recent film design spotlighting DC’s Fourth World characters. A significantly larger quantum of screen time for Darkseid was one of the major selling points of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and while the director’s cut was far less in sync with some of WB’s other recent DCEU systems, the plant’s flirtations with a multiverse have left open the eventuality for it to play a part in the cinematic macrocosm’s future.
While further of the Snyderverse’s take on Darkseid being alongside DuVernay’s might have complicated cult’ understanding of the Fourth World to a certain extent, WarnerBros. has lately played on multiple duplications of characters like the Joker and Batman being box office draws. It’s intriguing to consider whether the powers that be felt that trying to acclimatize classic Jack Kirby comics into a live- action film might be too delicate, or if the plant might rather be simply staying to introduce that lore to a wider followership What’s going to be really intriguing to see going forward is what ends up getting of DuVernay andco-executive patron Jill Blankenship’s forthcoming adaption of Naomi for the CW. As new a character as Naomi is, it would n’t be too surprising if ideas familiar to New Gods suckers pop up in the series, particularly given DuVernay’s involvement Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max, and Naomi premieres on the CW eventually in 2022.
