The Wall Street Journal landed the first interview with DC Comics president and CCO Geoff Johns about his new role as the co-head of DC Films, a job he’ll be taking on with movie producer Jon Berg.

Besides confirming that Joe Manganiello will play Deathstroke in Ben Affleck’s Batman movie, Johns also spoke about Justice League and their approach overall.

“Mistakenly in the past I think the studio has said, ‘Oh, DC films are gritty and dark and that’s what makes them different.’ That couldn’t be more wrong,” Johns told the WSJ. “It’s a hopeful and optimistic view of life. Even Batman has a glimmer of that in him. If he didn’t think he’d make tomorrow better, he’d stop.”

According to the WSJ, after the backlash that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice received, Warner Bros. made the decision to oversee their DC movies more closely, and hired Geoff Johns and Jon Berg to run their DC Films division. Warner Bros. employees also spoke about their reaction to that backlash:

While they knew the movies had flaws and expected them to be controversial, Warner executives were taken aback by the overwhelmingly negative responses, people at the studio said. They believed they had created more grounded, character-based stories that, like “The Dark Knight,” would favorably stand out from chief rival Marvel Studios’ consistently successful but fluffier fare such as “Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Justice League was always going to be less dark than Batman v Superman, but Johns and Berg worked with director Zack Snyder and screenwriter Chris Terrio to make changes after seeing everyone’s reactions.

“We accelerated the story to get to the hope and optimism a little faster,” Berg explained.

SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal