Warner Brothers has long been the partner for DC Comics. Now the studio is spinning off the popular comic book line into its own line as DC Entertainment.
The hope is to supercharge DC Comics by integrating it more closely with the studio’s various production units and distribution platforms.
Diane Nelson will head the division as its president; Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics since 2002, will become a writer, contributing editor and consultant for DC. The restructuring was announced Wednesday by Warners chairman and CEO Barry Meyer and president and COO Alan Horn.
The initiative has been driven by Jeff Robinov, whose contract as president of the Warner Bros. Picture Group was extended last week, and Nelson, who has been heading Warner Premiere, where she already has brought DC characters to the direct-to-video and VOD markets.
“This is something Diane and I have been working on together for more than a year now; it’s been a process,” Robinov said. “We really want to take DC’s deep wealth of characters and titles and run them across all our platforms — movies, television, video games, home video.”
The first order of business will be a review of all the DC projects currently in Warners’ pipelines with an eye toward developing a new master plan for upcoming releases that will be announced by January or February, charting the studio’s priorities more clearly.
Nelson, a specialist in brand management and marketing, has overseen the Harry Potter franchise for the studio and will continue to manage it, even beyond the release of the final film in the series in 2011.
“What we’ve done with Harry Potter — working together across Warners and even Time Warner to develop a focus and a strategic point of view — is a good model for what we want to do with DC Comics,” she said. “It will be a reciprocal relationship, working closely with the executives there and with the executives within each of our divisions to incubate and build new brands. It’s a great opportunity to bring more coordination and to focus and integrate DC with Warners more effectively.”
Robinov and Nelson said Levitz had been part of the ongoing discussions and that he would be involved in the search for a new publisher for DC Comics. “I will not be acting as publisher of DC,” said Nelson, who will report to Robinov.
They both expressed the hope that Levitz will continue to lend his expertise to the newly reorganized division as he moves into his new role as writer and consultant.
Could this mean we get they will do what Marvel is doing? Individual comic films (Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern, etc.) with the actors also contracted for a JLA movie after three years?