GREGORY NOVECK TALKS DC MOVIES

SAN FRANCISCO -- With the box-office and critical success of The Dark Knight the past year and the opening of another No. 1 movie, Watchmen, over the weekend, DC Comics has proven to be super-powered in the comics-to-film business.

Two more DC films -- Jonah Hex and Green Lantern -- now have announced release dates from Warner Bros., but what fans continue to salivate and speculate about is the future of DC's big three -- Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman -- in both solo movies and a Justice League film.

No one's more eager for those than Gregory Noveck, DC's senior vice president, creative affairs, who has been working to bring the company's characters to the big and small screens since 2003.

"Virtually all of these characters that you can think of are in one stage of development or another," Noveck told The Continuum during a recent interview at Wonder Con, where he was promoting the Wonder Woman animated movie. "Nothing is inactive. Nothing is dead.

"It's just a question of the right elements coming together, the right script coming in, the right filmmaker getting interested."

With rival Marvel igniting the comic-book movie boom over the last 10 years and now self-producing a slate of movies, Noveck said he understands increased pressure from fandom to have DC represented sooner than later.

"It's not frustrating to hear them complain," Noveck said. "What's frustrating is sort of pointing out all the stuff we are doing -- and that doesn't count?

"From the perspective of my job -- because I cover theatrical, television, animation, home video, online -- so from my standpoint, it's more like 'What aren't we doing?' Smallville just got renewed for another season. We're going to shoot a pilot for Human Target. We've got the DCU animated line. The Dark Knight certainly did OK. We've got Watchmen, Jonah Hex, Green Lantern."

As Noveck noted, DC's pipeline might be as congested as Marvel's, but fewer announced theatrical projects can provide the appearance -- correctly or incorrectly -- that DC is trailing Marvel in the box-office race, fueling fan impatience. Any unwillingness Noveck might have to specifically talk about the stages properties are in might be proper in the development cycle, but it can also be part of a vacuum that quickly fills with unfounded rumors and speculation.

It's a very similar cycle that Marvel went through in developing Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man and its other franchises, some of which went through multiple studios and years of development.

"I had a conversation recently with a fairly substantial producer," Noveck said. "We're talking about what it takes to get stuff made and he goes, 'Look, it is really hard to get a movie made' -- and that's somebody who has made 20 movies -- 'and it's really easy to kill a movie.'

"He goes, 'You can get 30 people along the line, at any point, with the wrongly placed no that kills the project.' Watchmen, Batman, anything you can point to. The fact that movies can make it to the finish line and turn out good is some sort of tiny miracle -- even when everyone has a full intent to make it, even when everyone surrounding it says that they're going to make it happen."

One recent attempt that didn't make the finish line -- at least not yet -- was a Justice League movie. Director George Miller in 2007 was moving ahead for a 2009 tentpole with a script by Kieran and Michele Mulroney. He had either tested for or cast roles and was looking to shoot Justice League in Australia before the film derailed.

"It was wonderful and tragic at the same time," Noveck said of working on that project. "On the one hand, you get to work on what would be a serious, big, honest Justice League movie. As a fan, as someone who loves this stuff and grew up watching Super Friends and reading Man of Steel and Crisis, it would be like, 'Wow, I'm sitting here and they're doing computer models and all this stuff.' And to be really involved with the script process on that one with the writers, that was a phenomenal experience.

"Like any project in Hollywood, sometimes development can get frustrating. We got to a point where the best draft of the script came in just as we were deciding that maybe this wasn't the best strategy to do with these characters.

"But that script still exists. The studio still wants to make a Justice League movie, I believe. You'd have to ask them. I don't want to go on record saying that they're going to make it. What I will say is that they're committed to these characters and they're committed to this universe. They want to see Batman, they want to see Superman, they want to see Wonder Woman and everybody else.

"The question becomes how and when and what's the best way to portray them. And it's a different answer every time. Because every time you look at the material and look at the state of what's going on, you get different answers. Sometimes it's, 'That script came in awesome. Let's do that one." Sometimes it's, "Can we get that filmmaker? We can't? Do we wait?'"

Certainly, Warner Bros. appears ready to wait for director Christopher Nolan after The Dark Knight became the No. 2 all-time film at the box office and counted two Oscars among its many awards.

Nolan is currently scheduled to write and shoot a sci-fi movie, Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio before likely returning to the Batman franchise.

Noveck is hopeful it won't be too much of a wait.

"He's such an economical filmmaker," Noveck said. "Even on The Dark Knight, he shoots these huge movies and he comes in under budget and ahead of schedule, which is unheard of.

"I think in this case, where it's just him writing it, my gut feeling is that as he is writing, he knows exactly how he's going to shoot it and what he's going to need and how he's going to do it. So the pre-production process becomes this very minimal thing. And from the little bit I know, it doesn't sound like it's going to be super heavy with effects. He seems to be very good about going in, shooting the movie, getting it done and going to the next thing."

Despite his now-famous Comic-Con quote of wanting to go all "Wrath of Khan" on a new Superman film, Superman Returns director Bryan Singer isn't signed for another film. Recent reports have indicated a reboot might be in order.

"He's a wonderful director, a supremely talented guy," Noveck said of Singer. "I give him full credit for Superman. It's gotten villification, but I've got to tell you, I've seen the versions before that, and, with no disrespect to anyone involved, thank God Bryan made that Superman. I think there are some wonderful aspects to that movie."

Part of having multiple franchises is trying to figure out how -- and if -- to make them fit together. Marvel's recent philosphy of trying to tie its movies -- Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Avengers -- is harder for DC to emulate too widely, Noveck noted.

"I think of one of the differences between DC and Marvel is Marvel is a very specific flavor," Noveck said. "We know those characters, it's X-Men, it's Iron Man, it's Fantastic Four. And it's kind of easy to link.

"It's hard to link V for Vendetta with Batman or a Wonder Woman animated feature with A History of Violence. People often don't see that kind of scope. In their minds, DC is Batman or is Superman."

Those two characters would be enough to keep Noveck busy, let alone the library DC has in development.

"We've done the math, where you look at everything in media over the last 40 years and what DC has done in television and movies compared to what Marvel has done, there's no comparison," Noveck said. "So the fact that people are having realistic conversations about why doesn't Marvel do more, why doesn't DC do more, what's Dark Horse got going... that's healthy, that's great. I'm happy to have that conversation."