justice league

The Snyder Cut will see the light of day.

On Wednesday night, the tweets started flying out of CinemaCon, claiming that Justice League’s announced runtime was a luxurious two hours and 50 minutes long. Articles were posted, fans were by turns excited or outraged, and IMDb was updated. The thing is, none of these reports were confirmed and the movie’s not coming out until November. It’s not even close to done.

With VR an up-and-coming storytelling medium, all the big studios want in on the action. Gone are the days of 4-D pirate adventures with seats that spit water into your face. The people don’t want to be in the movie anymore, they want to be the movie. The latest studio to get into the biz is Warner Bros., inking a deal with IMAX’s new VR component for virtual reality experiences based around the Justice League.

Who are the Justice League? The group is comprised of a bunch of different heroes in different combinations based on which comic arcs you’re reading at the time, but it always seems to have three core members: Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. Warner Bros. new Justice League movie didn’t feature the red-caped Kryptonian in this weekend’s trailer, and seems to be acting like he won’t be in the movie. Even Zack Snyder has been cagey about it.

When we last left the caped crusader, things weren’t looking all that bright. Sure, he had a new super-friend in the form of Diana Prince, but Superman — the complete-stranger-turned-mortal-enemy-turned-best-friend in Batman’s life — has sacrificed his life to protect Earth (or something) and now the weight of protecting our planet rested heavily on the shoulders of Bruce Wayne. If Wayne could organize others like him, then maybe Earth could stand a fighting chance.

While the CW’s live action shows are forming a huge DC Universe on TV, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is ever-expanding, years before either there was an entire multi-layered, character-filled superhero universe in the form of the DC Animated Universe. The DCAU started with Batman: The Animated Series, and from there it grew until we finally got to Justice League Unlimited, which featured almost every DC hero teaming up to protect the Earth against every threat imaginable. The show ran for 39 episodes between 2004 and 2006, and we've picked the ten best episodes from that run.

Writing about the latest developments in movie-centric news isn’t a bad job, by any means — I could be mining ore and plucking chickens like my Eastern European forefathers — but some days still make you wanna sharpen up your morning coffee with something a little stronger. The recent trend of movie studios airing brief mini-trailers to tease the release of upcoming slightly-longer trailers numbers among my least favorite developments in online buzz-cultivating, and leave it to Zack Snyder and the DC cinematic universe to take that to the next level. Running a trailer for the trailer is some weak-ass bull, the sort of thing those nerds at Marvel would do — this is DC, baby, where they run five trailers for the trailer.

It’s finally spring, or at least according to the calendars we’re three days into spring despite what the weather is telling us. And what do we all want to do when the seasons finally turn warm? Take a tip in the ocean, of course. That’s probably what’s on Aquaman’s mind in the new footage Warner Bros. dropped on TV this week to tease the upcoming Justice League trailer.

As you may have already heard, DC's greatest heroes (and Aquaman) are set to hit the big screen later this year in a live-action, big-budget Justice League movie. It turns out, however, that this won't be their only trip to movie theaters this year. This fall, the Justice League is heading to Japan to take on the evil forces of Eagle Talon in the appropriately titled DC Super Heroes vs. Eagle Talon, in which the would-be conquerors have to face their most staggering threat of all: An animation budget that gets completely drained by the arrival of some licensed superheroes. Check out the preview!

The DCEU has had its work cut out for it from the start. It had a little bit better footing than Marvel because everyone knows who Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman are, but it still seems like Warner Bros. is trying to fit too much information into every movie so that it can prepare for the next on in the series. The most notorious example of this was the commercial smack-dab in the middle of Batman v. Superman that teased the solo movies and Justice League team-up for a bunch of new characters you never see onscreen again. Apparently, in order to tie the next bunch of films in the series together, we might be seeing flashbacks and flash-forwards in the upcoming solo adventures.