Warner Bros. hopes to cure a case of superhero envy.
After years of lagging rival Marvel Entertainment in adapting comic-book properties for the big screen and other media, the Burbank studio unveiled a major restructuring of its DC Comics unit Wednesday that will bring its operations under tighter control.
The move is an effort by Warner Bros. and corporate parent Time Warner Inc. to implement a new strategy for DC Comics, which will face stiffer competition from a steroid-charged Marvel as a result of Walt Disney Co.'s deal last week to acquire it for $4 billion.
Diane Nelson, a top brand manager who has overseen Warner's lucrative "Harry Potter" franchise since 1999, has been put in charge of the newly named DC Entertainment with a mandate to better exploit its properties across the studio's movie, television, interactive, digital and consumer products businesses.
"This is the structural iteration of what we have been trying to accomplish for a long time," said Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer. "We think it is important for Warner Bros. to exercise appropriate control over these properties, because they are highly valued assets of our company."
For the four decades that Warner has owned DC, the publisher of such classic comics as "Superman," "Batman" and "Wonder Woman," the New York publisher has operated largely independently of the studio.
As superhero movies have become one of the most profitable genres in Hollywood, tensions between DC and Warner have contributed to the studio's inability to match the success of Marvel, which has scored on the big screen with such A-list characters as Spider-Man and lesser-known ones such as Iron Man and X-Men.
"It almost appears as if Warner Bros. were just buying DC now and deciding what to do with it," said Gareb Shamus, chief executive of Wizard Entertainment, which publishes a magazine following the comic-book industry. "This move is going to be great for Warner because it firmly puts the characters in control of the people who make movies and television."
Numerous DC properties, including "Wonder Woman," "Justice League" and "The Flash," have languished in development at Warner Bros. for years, with little coordination among the studio's producers and executives and the comic-book publisher. The unit's top development executive had reported directly to DC Publisher Paul Levitz rather than to anyone at Warner.
