Man Of Steel 2 And A Crisis On Infinite Earths Plan Were In Development Before New DC Management Came In

In the wake of James Gunn and Peter Safran being appointed as the creative leads for Warner Bros's DC content we're getting little glimpses behind the curtain of what the hell has actually been going on over at the studio, which has notoriously fractured their superhero goldmine into a million disparate pieces that are sometimes connected, sometimes not, and oftentimes left unfinished. 

Gunn and Safran have turned the DC world upside down already, and they haven't even made their full 10-year pitch to new studio head David Zaslav. We've heard bits and pieces of this new era, and it sounds like a complete overhaul is in the works, even though Gunn himself has said that it's still early, days and there's a lot still up in the air.

With the future still evolving and set in stone, we're seeing a lot of information come out about what Warners was planning on doing before Gunn and Safran were handed the reins. The new news today comes once again from The Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit, who says that not only was a "Man of Steel 2" with Henry Cavill in the early stages of development, but so was a massive "Avengers"-style DC event movie based on one of the most famous DC runs of all time: "Crisis on Infinite Earths." 

"Crisis" was used as an excuse to reset all of DC's big characters and titles in the mid-'80s, and it seems like that was the original plan for the DCEU as well. It's a multiverse style story where we see various versions of Earth being destroyed and the end result is one unified DC Universe, which is exactly what it sounds like the DCEU needs on the big scree.

The upcoming "Flash" movie is reportedly doing a lot of that groundwork. We know it's a multiverse story that is going to re-introduce us to Michael Keaton's Batman alongside the Ben Affleck version of the character, for instance, and former WB CEO Walter Hamada was hoping to use that as a stepping stone to "Crisis," which would bring the whole DCEU back together again in one unified story.

Meanwhile,"Man of Steel 2" would have continued Henry Cavill's Superman story, and Warners hired "Peaky Blinders" creator Steven Knight to write a treatment, which he turned in this past fall. Apparently the treatment didn't go over well with the brass, and from the sounds of things, that was probably a blessing in disguise for the studio, since it looks like Gunn and Safran are wanting a clean break from the tangled rats nest that is the modern DCEU, and whatever "Man of Steel" sequel plans were going to be thrown out anyway.

"What Ifs" are always interesting, and I expect we'll get a lot more tales from the confused DC development process of the past 10 years before we're done. Stay tuned.