There is no doubt that DC Comics and Warner Bros. have got their hands full with the productions under-going for Batman v Superman – Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, both these tent-poles slated for releases in 2016. It is such tight circumstances that have got Warner Bros. to call in aid from its sister studio New Line Cinema as DC Comics’ own imprinted Vertigo comics are undergoing live-action adaptions onto the big screen.
In light of meeting the stringent guidelines of the Comics Code Authority, DC Comics back in 1993 founded Vertigo which could have more graphic content without any age-restriction on its titles. Some of the popular titles under Vertigo included the likes of Shade, Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Animal Man, Black Orchid, The Books of Magic and The Sandman. While these titles surely boasted explicit content not purely meant for the fragile minds unlike those of DC’s Superman and Batman types, Vertigo characters weren’t created out of the DC comic universe; which means some of these characters have occupied darker, murkier roles in the main-stream DC universe alongside the major Justice Leaguers.
As Warner Bros. has shed the responsibility of adapting some of Vertigo’s titles onto the big-screen to New Line – the fore-runner is surely The Sandman, which Joseph Gordon-Levitt is already set to direct and star in. Written by Neil Gaiman, The Sandman is a dark graphic-comic series telling the story of Dream aka Morpheus one of seven Endless who rule over the world of dreams. The original series ran for 75 issues from January 1989 to March 1996. The series is a huge success owing to Gaiman’s trademark use of anthropomorphic personification of various metaphysical entities, while also blending mythology and history in its horror setting. Sharing his thoughts on his upcoming production, Joseph Gordon-Levitt commented that “We are using a whole bunch of specifics straight from the comics, but of course, we’re also having to do a certain amount of invention, and in between that, there’s tons of re-appropriating, re-contextualising, combining, consolidating, and all manner of things that literalists might not like. But what we try to be completely faithful about is the overall sentiment: that Dreams and Stories and Magic are actually all the same thing, and that they’re real, and that they’re powerful.”
Other properties under Vertigo which could potentially be adapted are Constantine, Preacher and Lucifer. However the Justice League Dark / Dark Universe, the spinoff movie that would star some of DC’s Vertigo-friendly heroes like Swamp Thing, Deadman, and John Constantine will be staying with Warner Bros. instead of heading to New Line. This opens new vistas of a potential cross-over between the Justice League we are well-versed with starring Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash and the Green Lantern, to name a few, all of which will get adapted into live-action in the coming decade under Warner Bros.
Apart from these New Line would also be co-producing Dwayne Johnson starrer Shazam (2019) along with DC Entertainment and Warner Bros.