MAN OF STEEL Producer David S. Goyer Says WB Pushed Them To Compete With Marvel: "We Need Our MCU"

Shortly after Marvel Studios struck gold with the launch of Iron Man and the MCU, Warner Bros. set the wheels in motion for its own shared DC Comics universe with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel.

Though there were a few bright spots here and there, the DCEU (as it was unofficially dubbed) didn't reach the same levels of success, and there was a perception that the studio rushed into things in an attempt to compete with Marvel.

WB execs often denied this when asked about it during interviews, but writer David S. Goyer has confirmed that this is exactly what WB's mindset was while chatting to the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

Goyer tells host Josh Horowitz that he feels Warners should’ve developed a standalone Superman sequel instead of rushing into Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

“I know the pressure we were getting from Warner Bros., which was, ‘We need our MCU! We need our MCU!’ And I was like let’s not run before we walk,” Goyer said. “The other thing that was difficult at the time was there was this revolving door of executives at Warner Bros. and DC. Every 18 months someone new would come in. We were just getting whiplash. Every new person was like, ‘We’re going to go bigger!'”

“I remember at one point the person running Warner Bros. at the time had this release that pitched the next 20 movies over the next 10 years," he continued. "But none of them had been written yet! It was crazy how much architecture was being built on air. This is not how you build a house.”

Goyer was also asked about the decision to have Supes kill General Zod during the climatic battle, and whether he anticipated the scene being so controversial. He says he felt this was the right decision for the more "grounded" story they were telling, before adding that he wrote a scene with Jonathan Kent taking Clarke hunting that would have teed up the Zod moment, but had to cut it due to time constraints.

The final film of the DCEU era will be December's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which will be followed by the official launch of the new DCU with Superman: Legacy. DC Studios co-CEOS James Gunn and Peter Safran have been planning and developing this shared world for quite a while, so we can only hope that they don't repeat past mistakes.