Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara told a group of analysts at the Merrill Lynch Media Conference that DC Entertainment would provide "the basis, the foundation" for a planned slate of 12-14 Warner Bros. films.  Tsujihara mentioned the Batman vs. Superman film that is due in 2015 and then went on to state "there are going to be in the coming months a lot of announcements regarding the kind of future movie, television, game, and consumer product pieces that are going to come from DC."

Tsujihara’s remarks about DC came in the context of question about how Warner Bros. had managed to remain the number one or number two studio for the past 22 years.  Here’s the full context of his remarks about DC’s importance to the coming slate of Warner Bros. films: "Female-centric kind of pictures, they have been really successful and obviously the Tolkien kind of franchise with the Hobbit is kind of a signature piece. Then you have 12 to 14 pictures coming from Warner Bros.  And I think the basis, the foundation of those 12 to 14 pictures are going to be coming from DC Entertainment. We have Batman versus Superman coming out in '15, but there are going to be in the coming months a lot of announcements regarding the kind of the future movie, television, games and consumer product pieces that are going to be coming from DC.  On top of that, today’s announcement that we made about J. K. Rowling is incredibly important (see "'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them'") because it’s another piece of kind of a foundation of what we want to be able to build off of."
 
In his speech at the Merrill Lynch conference (see this poorly-rendered transcript), Tsujihara also praised Warner Bros. and DC for creating highly successful video games based on the DC characters (the one area where WB and DC have a major advantage over rivals Disney and Marvel), and then went on to express his delight in the success of Man of Steel and the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman in Batman vs. Superman: "We couldn’t be happier about the movie that Zack, with Chris Nolan’s help, created.  It was a total reboot of the Man of Steel or Superman and it really gives credibility to that character and Henry (Cavill) did a great job.  It’s a perfect springboard to then move into next 15, we think Zack is going to be directing Batman and Superman, though we haven’t titled it yet.  And we are really excited about the fact that we were able to convince Ben (Affleck) to play Batman.  He is a perfect fit for the role and it’s going to be a Batman that you’ve absolutely never seen before.  He’s kind of tired and kind of weary, he’s been doing this for a while and Ben is perfect for the vision that Zack has for that character.  The fact that you saw such a passionate response (to Man of Steel) is really kind of a testament to the love that people have for this character, and it’s really exciting to see kind of where this is going and Zack’s vision of how he’s going to put that movie together.  We think it’s going to be huge."
 
With just one DC-inspired movie on the WB slate so far, the as-yet-untitled Batman vs. Superman, DC and Warner Bros. remain well behind Marvel and Disney who have already announced a carefully crafted, multi-tiered plan that currently calls for 2-3 Marvel superhero-based movies annually from now on for the foreseeable future (Marvel is already on "Phase 3" of its multi-year plan, see "Doctor Strange Movie Confirmed").  Warner Bros. will need to unleash of flood of announcements if it hopes to compete with Disney’s ambitious slate of Marvel-based movies.