Warner Bros. To Release Huge DCEU Box Set Without Suicide Squad Movies
Warner Bros. will release a 10-movie box set featuring virtually all of the "DC Extended Universe" titles -- but excluding the ones that feature Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. A French Amazon listing for the box set popped up online, just as U.S. retailers started putting up undated preorder links for The Flash. Assuming there aren't some kind of contractual or rights issues that we don't know about, the implication seems to be that Suicide Squad, The Suicide Squad, and Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn might be canon, or at least mostly canon, to the rebooted DC Universe.
The box set, which will likely pop up here on the US Amazon site soon, is currently listed at a price of 150,49€ (that's around $165 USD). The set includes Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Shazam!, Aquaman, Wonder Woman 1984, Black Adam, Shazam!: Fury of the Gods, and The Flash.
You can see a mock-up of the box art below.
The box art appears to show the standard version of Justice League, although the product description on Amazon suggests the one in the box set will be Zack Snyder's Justice League. This box set is an update of one that currently exists -- that one includes Suicide Squad but omits Black Adam, The Flash, Shazam!:Fury of the Gods, and Wonder Woman 1984.
With Blue Beetle coming this summer and its director confident that the character will appear again in the rebooted DC Universe that James Gunn is preparing with producer Peter Safran, all signs point toward The Flash being the final nail in the coffin of Warner Bros.' first stab at a shared cinematic universe for its superheroes. The project launched with 2013's Man of Steel, and the plan was for that film's director, Zack Snyder, to oversee the universe as it grew. Snyder followed up Man of Steel with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which introduced the characters of Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg, and The Flash. That group would become the core of the Justice League, a team that was originally set to star in a two-part epic directed by Snyder.
After Batman v Superman didn't make the kind of money Warner Bros. wanted, though, the studio panicked and began looking over Snyder's shoulder. Justice League became a single movie that would get a sequel only if it performed, and at some point during the production, the studio hired Marvel's the Avengers director Joss Whedon to do rewrites on the film. Eventually, Snyder walked away from the movie, citing his mental health and the need to be with his family following the death of his daughter. While he would eventually get to make an epic director's cut of Justice League, Snyder has not been directly involved in the development and production of the films.
During Snyder's time, he helped develop both Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman and David Ayer's Suicide Squad. After movies like Batman v Superman earned enormous box office receipts but still underperformed relative to their huge budgets, Warner set out to make some DC movies -- like Shazam! and Birds of Prey -- for far less, allowing them to be profitable even if they didn't break the $1 billion mark that Marvel was besting with ease in those days. Both Wonder Woman and Shazam! got sequels -- as did Suicide Squad...kind of...as James Gunn came in to do his own thing with the property. Last but not least, two movies that had been in development for years -- Black Adam and The Flash -- were finally released, although neither had the massive opening weekend that WB had hoped for.