I Warner Bros. Discoverys senaste earnings call (typ: ekonomiskt möte) diskuterade chefen David Zaslav företagets framtid vad gäller dess syn på film, spel, kultur och främst "metaverse" - det vill säga att försöka fånga in fans av ett visst varumärke (till exempel Harry Potter eller Game of Thrones) på ett mer helhetsmässigt sätt.
Detta, menade Zaslav, är möjligt eftersom företaget äger sina varumärken och "världar" helt och fullt. Som ett exempel tar han upp hur Hogwart's Legacy fångade upp Harry Potter-fansen, och sedan tycks Zaslav även antyda att något Superman-relaterat är i görningen. Såhär sade han:
We have a very good gaming business with 11 different studios, and a real talented capability.
But the real differentiator for us as a company is that we own our IP. That IP belongs to us, and we're developing it, and in some cases we may choose to develop it with a third party game technology company.
We may be the only media company that owns--whether it be the DC universe, Harry Potter, all the content that we own, Game of Thrones--that's for us to deploy. I think that's particularly important strategically.
If you look at Hogwarts Legacy, a big piece of the success of that game is that you go into it. If you're a player, you go into that game and you're in that world. That's kind of a new concept. Before it was gaming and it was storytelling, and now...it's very difficult to understand what the definition of the metaverse is...
When we launch a product on Max or HBO, and when we have a game, that game belongs to us, but now there's this in-betweener. It may be in the next couple of years that we launch a Superman movie and...people spend more time and there's more economics of people just hanging out in the Superman world and universe.
The fact that we own all of that is something that I think is going to be really important as we look forward--as technology develops, and given the amount of time that people spend on gaming [..]"
Man måste, förstås, läsa mellan raderna. Det är väl valda ord som mer ska indikera vart tankarna går just nu, men mycket tyder på att man planerar för att låta Gunns Stålis ackompanjeras av ett tillhörande spel just eftersom, som Zaslav avslutar:
"[we] don't want to be in the motion picture and longform storytelling business and have somebody else in the business of hanging out in those worlds. Those worlds are going to be quite profitable in the years ahead."
Är du sugen på ett nytt Stålmannen-spel, kanske?