Brief reply: they did not. The DCEU did not exist as an idea when “Man of Metal” first went into improvement in 2008, which was the identical 12 months that Christopher Nolan’s “The Darkish Knight” made greater than a billion {dollars} on the field workplace. On the time, it was the highest-grossing superhero film ever made. So, when Nolan pitched an concept for a Superman film to the studio, primarily based on discussions along with his “Darkish Knight” trilogy co-writer David S. Goyer, Warner Bros. virtually bit his hand off. Nolan signed on as a producer, Goyer was employed to write down the script, and all that was left was to discover a director (Nolan nonetheless needed to ship “The Darkish Knight Rises” for 2012, so he could not do it).
Quite a lot of well-known names have been thought of for the director’s chair on “Man of Metal,” from Guillermo del Toro to Ben Affleck. However Nolan finally settled on younger hotshot (44 is younger in director years) Zack Snyder. Watching “Watchmen” had satisfied him that Snyder had an “innate aptitude for coping with superheroes as actual characters.” As Nolan defined to the New York Instances in 2013, “That was what a brand new strategy to Superman required. He understands the ability of iconic photos, however he additionally understands the individuals behind them.” Warner Bros. had a billion causes to belief Nolan’s judgment, so Snyder was introduced on board as a director in 2010.
Even with out Nolan’s endorsement, Snyder was a wise alternative. “300” was a large field workplace success that got here out of nowhere. “Watchmen” might have flopped, however it was removed from a complete catastrophe, and there have been loads of components accountable for its underperformance. It was rated R, it had no well-known film stars among the many forged, and no well-known superheroes among the many characters. A studio exec may simply conclude that the fashion of “Watchmen” utilized to a well-known character like Superman and sanded all the way down to a four-quadrant-friendly PG-13 ranking was the right recipe for field workplace success. And they’d be confirmed proper when Snyder’s “Man of Metal” grossed $670 million worldwide — virtually $300 million greater than Nolan’s DC debut, “Batman Begins,” had made.
In the meantime, over in Marvelville, “The Avengers” had grossed a very absurd $1.5 billion on the field workplace, stealing the crown for highest-grossing superhero film from “The Darkish Knight” by a substantial margin. It is little surprise that Warner Bros. caught the cinematic universe fever. “What Zack and Chris have executed with this movie is mean you can actually introduce different characters into the identical world,” Warner Bros. Photos Group’s then-president Jeff Robinov teased in an interview with Leisure Weekly.
The studio needed its personal comedian e-book mega-franchise, and Snyder was already within the studio, revving his engines. After “Man of Metal” succeeded, Warner Bros. fired the beginning pistol for him. Frankly, it could have been silly to not.
