The Suits

There was a really depressing article in Friday's Wall Street Journal about how Warner Brothers- in part based on the success of the last two Batman films- is going to make fewer, more expensive films, and are going to mine DC Comics for characters. Warner Brothers currently produces 25 t 26 films per year, and will cut back to 20 to 22 films a year- with as many as eight "tent pole" films to be based on DC Comic characters.

Oy.

Is this short sighted? Warners recently closed its two art house labels- Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse. Evidently the films produced by the these entities: Goodnight and Good Luck, Before Sunset, In the Valley of Elah, La Vie en Rose, The Notorious Betty Page, Pan's Labyrinth didn't fit the new Warner's model. Maybe if Edith Piaf and Edward R. Morrow had been comic book characters things would be different.

Read the article and weep.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121936107614461929.html?mod=2_1168_1

PeterH