Thanks to The Avengers, the superhero genre is white hot in Hollywood again.  This week news about DC Comics-based movies under development at Warner Bros. has slipped out, but it’s all very preliminary face-saving sort of stuff about writers being assigned to Lobo, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam, and Suicide Squad and other projects that will take years to make it (if they ever do) to the big screen.  The big "reveal" was that Gangster Squad scriptwriter Will Beall had been secretly working on a Justice League script for over a year (see "Gangster Squad Scribe Writing 'Justice League' Script"). 

In addition Warner Bros. is trying to decide how to revive the Green Lantern as a movie property, whether it is better to bring back Ryan Reynolds and build off the first GL film or to start over fresh and completely reboot the property.  Michael Goldenberg, who is also working on a Wonder Woman script, did work on a script for a sequel to the Green Lantern, which was shelved after the expensive Green Lantern movie bombed at the box office in 2011.

Variety is reporting the Warner Bros. wants to keep Christopher Nolan involved even after Nolan’s Batman trilogy is over.  Nolan is a producer on Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman, Man of Steel, which will debut a year from now on June 14th, 2012.  According to Variety, the studio is hoping that Nolan will function on DC movies in much the same way that David Heyman shepherded the eight Harry Potter movies to the screen.

The desire to get Nolan involved is the reason that Variety opines that "Warner Bros. isn’t expected to make any concrete moves on the DC film front until after the third Batpic opens on July 20th."

The question is will Nolan, who is a serious filmmaker, want to become a glorified showrunner for DC movies?  Warner Bros. is already well behind Marvel in developing a coherent slate of comics-based movies with solid release dates in all the key movie-going seasons over the next few years.  Sure The Dark Knight Rises will be a major hit, and The Man of Steel has definitely possibilities (though based on Superman Returns, it’s no sure thing).  But after that there is only a disparate group of movies based on DC Comics in various stages of script development.