Batman v Superman: Studio Boss Explains Release Date Change

For a while, there was going to be the biggest clash of superheroes we’d ever seen at the box office. You may recall that Warner Bros. originally had Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice set to land in July of this year, before pushing it back to May 6, 2016. At that stage, Marvel had earmarked that date for a then-unnamed movie, which we now know as Captain Amerca: Civil War. Marvel refused to blink on the release date, so Warner Bros. moved Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice again, to where it now sits on March 25, 2016.

But why move the film from 2015 in the first place? Mad Max: Fury Road aside, Warner Bros. hasn’t had much of a summer movie season and its CEO, Kevin Tsujihara, has admitted in a new interview with the Hollywood Reporterthat shifting Batman v Superman “was a tough decision at the time because it was going to create a hole in 2015" -- which it did, and the studio has paid a price for that.

However, Tsujihara continued that the move "was absolutely the right decision for the franchise, for DC and the movie. Having seen the movie multiple times, and then again last night, I’m extremely confident it was the right decision to make the movie better. And it’s so important for the studio to get the foundation right on DC”.

He’s not kidding there. Warner Bros. is close to gambling the house on its DC movie universe, with two of its annual blockbusters per year given over to comic book projects until at least 2020. It doesn’t want to be rebooting anything again if it can help it.

2016 will be pivotal then, with Batman v Superman teed up for March and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad on track for August 2016 as well. The full DC superhero movie release calendar is here.

You can read everything we know about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice right here.

Everything we know about Suicide Squad can be found here.