At San Diego’s recent Comic-Con, DC Universe announced that in 2024 it will be releasing two new animated films in the Watchmen and Justice League universes.
Watchmen will be based on the iconic graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons that inspired Zack Snyder’s 2009 adaptation as well as a 2019 sequel series by HBO. The Justice League offering will be titled Crisis on Infinite Earths.
No details about plot lines were revealed, other than the fact that the Watchmen film would be R-rated.
Patrick Wilson, one of the stars of the 2009 adaptation, was quoted by ReelBlend as saying: “Watchmen is the only movie of mine that I have watched front to back since a premiere — that movie is awesome. I just wanted to look at it as an older guy, as a filmmaker. I knew Zack was ahead of the curve. It’s weird to say that audiences weren’t ready for it. But you need a movie like that.
You need movies to go so dark that then Avengers can go so light. I do believe in that.”
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths had its origins in the mid-1980s, in a DC Comics publication that is considered iconic for its depiction of a multiverse at the mercy of a destructive entity known as the Anti-Monitor.
Commenting on DC’s plans, Joshua Rivera wrote in Polygon: “Watchmen is a lot of comic book, the sort of story that is longer than DC’s 90-minute animated films tend to be. In the past, DC has adapted lengthier stories across two films, like The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Hush, which could be an option here, since the DC animated films named after comics tend to be relatively true to the source material. Otherwise, we might be looking at a new take on Watchmen entirely, which will definitely go over well.”