Another week, another set of news stories. Welcome to Deja News, the weekly Monday news article where I talk about the news from last week that you already know about and if somehow you don’t know about it, then you’re welcome.

Justice League Struggles at the Box Office

This past weekend Warner Brother’s highly… anticipated(?) movie Justice League released and was immediately met with reviews that mostly deemed the film a complete mess. Full disclosure, I have yet to see the film so I won’t be speaking on it’s quality, but what I can speak on is what this potentially means for the future of the DC Cinematic Universe. So how badly did Justice League do at the box office? Domestically the film, who’s full budget could be as high as 500 million dollars once you include advertising, brought in 96 million dollars. If you’re WB, this is a complete disaster.

Don’t get me wrong, 96 million is an impressive number… if you’re anything other than the first film featuring the Justice League. The fact that this movie made less money opening weekend than the remake of IT ($123M), the 3rd Thor movie ($122M), the 3rd reboot of Spider-Man ($177M), and it even managed to lose to the 8th, yes 8th Fast and Furious movie ($98M) is bad. I don’t care how big of a fan of DC you are, there’s no way this can be called anything less than a disappointment.

I’m not one to scream only gloom and doom though. All hope isn’t lost though. This can all be saved with the proper moves. As I’ve spoken about before, all reports claim that WB is comfortable with the idea of movies that aren’t connected to their current DC franchises and if future DC films went in that direction, I don’t think most fans would be opposed.

There are major issues going down this path, however. Aquaman is already well into production. Is WB willing to cancel that film and accept the loss of money that they’ve already spent? Probably not. And what about Wonder Woman? Of all the characters in the DC Cinematic Universe, she’s undeniably the most beloved. Walking away from that character would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. So what can be done? Well, with The Flash movie being something that still currently exists, it may be the little puzzle piece that could solve everything.

With the belief that The Flash film will be based on the famous flashpoint storyline, with some creative thinking, WB could use the storyline involving Flash traveling across different DC timelines, to resolve some of these issues. Will it happen? I honestly don’t know, but for everyone that’s a fan of seeing their favorite DC heroes on the big screen, I certainly hope so.

EA, Go to Your Room and Think about What You’ve Done!

Oh my goodness, what a roller coaster of emotions for EA and Dice as they launched Star Wars Battlefront 2. To very quickly recap, Star Wars is a film series that was created by… wait, too far back. Basically, EA and Dice were releasing the follow up to the wildly successful Star Wars Battlefront, but then everything proceeded to figuratively crap the bed as fans began to realize just how unfair the game’s micro-transactions were. How unfair were they? Well, EA dropped how much it cost to unlock certain content by 75% in hopes to ease players concerns. These changes were so significant that game reviewers like Game Informer actually had to start their reviews completely over because of how different the game was after the changes. Sadly for EA though, with this being done mere days before the game released, players had already made up their minds. Pre-orders were soon being canceled in the thousands.

As it sits now, EA has completely shut down player’s ability to spend real money on in-game items… I’m not one to say I told you so, but I wrote an article about how some gaming journalists were convinced that single player gaming was dead and microtransactions were the future and it was my opinion that they were wrong. While I’m in no way trying to suggest that micro-transactions and loot boxes are now dead because of what happened with EA, I am suggesting that gamers made their voices heard when they didn’t go out and purchase the game. Gamer’s doing this resulted in a change that we’re going to see across the entire industry. I guarantee you that Rockstar is making sure they aren’t going to make the same mistake with Red Dead Redemption 2’s multiplayer mode and the same can definitely be said the same for EA/Bioware’s upcoming game Anthem which is surely going through some changes as we speak.

Hopefully, gamers will remember this moment and remember that if they want to see change, they have to stand by what they are saying in message boards and vote with their wallets not just their keyboards. That’s the only way the consumer will be able to keep control of the industry they love so much.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Jakeman!

I know, I know, more DC news. I promise this will be quick though. Have you ever heard of the man known as… Gyllenhaal? Good, that means you don’t live under a rock and I don’t have to explain who Jake Gyllenhaal is. Well, it seems that during all of this Justice League drama… commotion… kerfuffle, Ben Affleck stated in a profile for the USA Today about playing Batman, “You don’t do it forever, so I want to find a graceful and cool way to segue out of it.”

You don’t do it forever? Mr. Affleck, sir, you’ve only done “it” for 2 movies. Either way, this is now the 2nd time that rumors and speculation have swirled around Affleck and just how long he’ll continue to be Batman. In steps, the rumors that at the top of Matt Reeve’s list, the man slated to direct the upcoming(?) standalone Batman film, sits Jake Gyllenhaal. While I think that would be a great choice play Batman, with how things currently stand, it would be a little weird having Gyllenhaal step into the role of an older Batman. So before I bid you goodbye, let me throw out my own personal theory on what DC should/could do with Gyllenhaal in the role.

It’s my opinion that DC should cancel the upcoming Nightwing movie and in a weird way, almost merge that title with the upcoming Batman movie. There are a million ways to do it but I’m currently not getting paid to write for DC (I am available though… just saying) so how they do it is up to them, but Jake Gyllenhaal should be Dick Grayson and by the end of the standalone Batman movie, he should take over the role of Batman. I think that would be the most fun and interesting way of doing things… assuming that DC isn’t about to just blow the whole thing up and start over. Also very quicky, while I’m a big fan of Gyllenhaal possibly playing Batman, but my personal pick has always been Ryan Gosling. The man was just born to brood! Either way, the future of the Batman character is one I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on.

Conclusion

Wow, what a doozy of a day. Well, what are your thoughts? Did you see Justice League? Are you surprised it did so poorly? Where would you like to see it go next? And while we’re on the subject of DC, what about that Batman news? How would you like to see them handle the recasting? And… EA. Hopefully, this is the final time I have to talk about them this year, so what are your thoughts now that this Battlefront story has finally (hopefully) come to an end? This has been another week Deja News. I will see you guys tomorrow where I’ll be talking about the loaded, stuffed to the gills Playstation Store and all of the games coming out. See ya then.