Will The AT&T Purchase Of Time Warner Affect DC Films?

Does AT&T purchasing Time Warner mean anything for their slate of DC films?

AT&T is set to purchase Time Warner for the princely sum of $85 million. There are a lot of important questions to be asked about this  potential merger, most of them relating to things like monopolies on internet providers. There’s actually a decent chance this deal may even be blocked as its one of the rare things both sides of the political spectrum seem to be pretty wary of. But assuming AT&T does own Time Warner come the end of 2017 when the deal is set to be finalized, what does that mean for comic book fans?

Disney owns Marvel, but not everything Marvel (at least as far as certain rights such as TV & Film go). That’s why Fox can still make terrible Fantastic Four movies and X-Men films and Sony despite working with Marvel is still the one making Spider-Man films. Time Warner owns DC lock, stock and barrel. So if anyone buys Time Warner they get the entirety of DC. That’s all the comics, TV shows and movies.

There won’t be any immediate effect apparent for sure. Movies like Justice League and Wonder Woman are too far along to be affected by this. And even films in 2018 such as Aquaman and The Flash might finish filming before the deal is finished and AT&T could possibly have any effect. But what about the Batman solo movie, or Man of Steel 2 or the Harley Quinn spin-off? It could literally be anything from insisting that AT&T branding be in every movie (Bruce Wayne uses the AT&T network to connect all his devices!) to going so far as to block or pick a particular actor, writer or director for a film depending on how involved they want to get.

Next: Casting Kevin Conroy As Batman

Assuming the merger goes through, I think a lot of this depends on Warner Bros. performance as a division. If big movies meant to be tentpole franchises such as not just Justice League, but Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, which already has 5 sequels/spin-offs planned, fail to meet expectations at the box office, I can totally see AT&T putting someone else in charge of that division and tightly scrutinizing the decisions made. If the films perform well, they may just leave the whole TV & Film division to its own devices as long as they are making a good return. We’ll just have to see how everything shakes out.