UPDATE Aug. 21: The answer arrived. Our sources now detail the plan: Ellison is going all in on Batman with a Reeves trilogy push, with Snyder’s projects on their own parallel track, and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman 3 possibly moving before Cavill’s DC return.
Everyone reading our Dark Knight Returns reporting this past week has asked the same question in one form or another: why would the incoming owners of Warner Bros. want a Zack Snyder Batman movie?
We put it to our insiders. The same insiders who told us that Hal Jordan dies, which was confirmed last night.
The answer came back as a list, and none of it is fan service. It’s business.
Per our insiders, there are a few reasons Paramount wants The Dark Knight Returns. Two of them explain the whole week.
Reason One: “They Can’t Take Another Reboot”
The first is the property itself.
In our insiders’ words, it is “the greatest, most iconic story of the two most popular superheroes, Batman and Superman.”
And the people who would greenlight it know what a new start costs.
Internally, we’re told, the Ellisons, De Luca, and the Saudi investors are in ongoing talks and “know they can’t take another reboot and build the characters up.”
Look at the record.
Batman has been restarted on screen four times since Michael Keaton, counting the one James Gunn still hasn’t cast (if it happens), and Superman three times since Christopher Reeve, not even counting TV.
Each restart bought years of setup before the payoff.
The Dark Knight Returns needs none of that. Two actors the audience already accepts as these characters, in the most famous story ever told about them, per our insiders, already storyboarded.
Then the competition.
“With Spider-Man racing to 2 billion and Avengers: Doomsday next, DC can’t just rely on Matt Reeves’ Batverse,” they said.
That is the landscape as it stands.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day just hit $2 billion, one of only seven movies to do so. Avengers: Doomsday lands December 18.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros.’ own slate is in a slump, Gunn’s Supergirl is the worst-performing DC movie of all time, and Reeves’ next Batman isn’t due until February 2028.
One Gotham is not enough volume against that.
Which raises the objection everyone will make: two Batmen?
Our insiders say the new regime has already answered it: “The new regime knows that Sony’s simultaneous Spider-Verse didn’t hurt the MCU Spidey.”
Two Spider-Men, two audiences, no cannibalization.
Sony’s animated Spider-Verse films ran alongside Tom Holland’s MCU run and both thrived.
Applied to DC, Reeves’ Gotham and Snyder’s Gotham can coexist, and the standalone model our July reporting described, done the way Warner Bros. did Watchmen, is built for exactly that.
That coexistence is now confirmed as the plan. Per our newest exclusive, it’s both, on parallel tracks, with every director getting their own.
Reason Two: Nobody Else Can Make This Pitch
The second reason is about scale, and about who is available to deliver it.
Per our insiders, “there’s a hunger for epic, mythological events tailored for IMAX,” and there is “no DC superhero pitch that any director in Hollywood can make save for Chris Nolan and the Russos that would fulfill what Par/Warners know the audience wants.”
The hunger is not theoretical.
The Odyssey, shot entirely in IMAX, became Nolan’s biggest movie. Disney just locked Avengers: Secret Wars and Star Wars: Starfighter into IMAX.
The event format is what’s working, and it’s what Paramount has told everyone it wants for Warner Bros.
Now run the list of directors who can make DC at that scale.
Nolan “only wants to work his films,” which has been true since he left Gotham.
The Russos “are committed to Marvel the next few years,” with Doomsday in December and Secret Wars a year later.
“Even Destin Cretton is set for Naruto next, and Sony wants him back for Spidey again,” added the insiders.
That last part is already on the record. Producer Amy Pascal told Deadline this month that Cretton is their choice to direct Spider-Man 5, “if we have our way,” and his live-action Naruto shoots first, in the first half of 2027. Sony wants him, and he is booked.
Cross those names off, and the answer writes itself.
The one director with a DC pitch at IMAX event scale, already built for IMAX and ready to go, with the boards drawn, the author co-signing, and both leads named, is Zack Snyder.
What It Adds Up To
Put the two together and this stops looking like a fan campaign and starts looking like a spreadsheet.
The Dark Knight Returns is the only DC event that requires zero character rebuilding, is pre-sold to the largest superhero audience in the world, fits the IMAX format the market is rewarding, and comes from the only director able to deliver it who isn’t already spoken for.
Both stars are named: per our insiders, Ben Affleck as Batman and Henry Cavill as Superman.
The sequencing conversation has already started, too. Per our newest reporting, keep an eye on Gal Gadot’s schedule, with Cavill booked solid into 2027.
And Snyder himself keeps signaling, most recently with a BvS set photo scored to “We Do This Together”.
The only thing missing is an owner who can say yes.
Warner Bros. has agreed not to close the deal until a trial verdict, as late as June 2027, unless a settlement lands before Ellison’s October 1 deadline.
And after that? Welcome back the SnyderVerse.
