What does that plan look like? Zaslav doesn’t give specific details for his company, but he does point to another business.

“It’s very similar to the structure [former Disney Studios Chairperson] Alan Horn, [former Disney CEO] Bob Iger, and Kevin Feige put together very effectively at Disney,” Zaslav explained. “We think we can build a much stronger, sustainable growth business out of DC.”

While it’s certainly possible that DC can improve on its current position outside of comics, it remains to be seen if the company can even hope to rival Marvel on the big screen. Under Feige’s leadership, Marvel slowly built a cinematic universe off of Iron Man, a heavily-improvised film featuring a B-list hero, establishing new characters before spinning them off into their own films. That approach has made Marvel into the most popular movie franchise of all time, and with the studio well on its way to wrapping up Phase 4 of its storytelling and already planning Phases 5 and 6, DC has a tremendous amount of catching up to do if it ever hopes to pull off a narrative arc as big as the MCU’s Infinity War and Multiverse Sagas

Closer to home, DC also has to deal with the confusing state of its characters in the public imagination. While audiences can likely understand that Christopher Reeve and Michael Keaton played different versions of Superman and Batman than Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck, recent movies and TV shows have given us multiple and simultaneous versions of Batman, Superman, the Flash, the Joker, and others. Furthermore, many still associate DC characters with Snyder’s dour and excessive style, which certainly has its fans, but has also alienated other moviegoers with its idiosyncratic style.

Zaslav’s “reset” hopes to erase that confusion and use the next decade to establish a clear and coherent brand. To that end, he’s hired Horn as a consultant, and is looking for someone to be the Kevin Feige of the DCEU. But decisions like cancelling an anticipated and nearly-completed film suggest more chaos than control.

Will Zaslav manage DC’s crisis and create a new and compelling universe? We’ll likely know sooner rather than later.

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