Just when you thought it was a fairly average Tuesday night, news broke that DC and Warner Bros. are beginning the work on an origin story movie for the Joker. The film, said to have renowned director Martin Scorsese acting as producer, will be unrelated to the Joker introduced in last year’s Suicide Squad. The character will instead be based in his own continuity, set in the '80s and played by someone other than Jared Leto.

What was buried underneath Deadline's story was a bigger one: the Joker film will begin a new initiative where Warner Bros. will “expand the canon of DC properties” starring versions of its characters featuring different actors and unique storylines that won’t interfere with the DC Extended Universe canon. This revelation is particularly interesting in the wake of a recent rumor that the studio has been commissioning pitches to adapt Mark Millar, Dave Johnson and Killian Plunkett's Elseworld series Superman: Red Son to film.

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Perhaps the most obvious argument against this initiative is tha it runs the possibility of being amazingly confusing to the average moviegoer. However, thanks to The Flash introducing the concept of the multiverse to millions of people, many has just learned naturally to accept that the The CW's DCTV shows are in their own world, Gotham and Lucifer have their own continuities on Fox, and the animated movies are each doing their own thing. The only time there was any real confusion was back when Supergirl -- then a CBS series -- had a crossover with the Flash for the first time, a situation that was quickly rectified the following year when the former migrated to the CW for its second season.

Movies are a different beast altogether, however. The whole idea of a shared movie universe, after all, is barely a decade old, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was born and made “continuity” the word of the day. What once seemed impossible to fathom has reached a point that we’ve all learned to just accept that shared universes are a thing for nearly all franchises, from Star Wars to Fast and Furious and Stephen King’s absurdly large library of novels. Depending on what form this particular slate of movies takes, the company may have to put in some extra work to make it clear these movies are in their own canons. It’s one thing for DC to put out a movie based on say, the DC Bombshells comics, and another to announce a Superboy movie set in the present day.

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DC's Bench is Deep Enough to Support Numerous Non-Continuity Films

There's no denying, however, the appeal in this approach to exploiting DC's vast roster of characters. The DCEU's current slate of films is all focused on heavy hitters--Flashpoint, Green Lantern Corps, Wonder Woman II, etc. That’s perfectly fine, but there is something to be said about shining the spotlight on the B-players as well.

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Taking a page from the MCU’s book here would be the smart move; i.e., make sure that each film has a distinct style and genre from one another. It sounds like an easy thing to do, but so far, Wonder Woman has really been the only DC Film production to achieve this goal. Batman v Superman is a weird mishmash of political thriller and WWE face-off that left viewers divided, while Suicide Squad wasn’t entirely sure if it wanted to be dark and gritty, or a stylish superhero movie. As a result, both films were criticized for their takes on DC's iconic characters. By creating new films that have their separate continuities, the actor, directors and producers will have more creative freedom to do whatever they well please with them. It won’t shield them from criticism, of course, but it will be a good reminder to people that they can simply write off the film version of this character if they so wish, and look towards the DCEU-proper films for their DC superhero fix.

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It makes sense that a Batman character would be the company’s first attempt at doing films of this magnitude, what with the Dark Knight and his supporting cast being the most famous characters the studio has in its arsenal. It’s who will be picked to star in the next film that will truly determine whether or not this’ll truly be a success. This would be a good opportunity for DC to take advantage of the creative freedom they’ve given their characters and grant a solo film to someone like say, Lois Lane, since those YA novels of hers seem to be doing pretty well. Characters like Lobo and Kamandi are now fair game because of this, as is that Blue Beetle/Booster Gold duo film that fans have been practically begging for. And then there's that Red Son rumor, which would really set audiences' buzzing as they try to wrap their heads around the concept of Superman as a Cold War-era Russian superhero.

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“Unique storylines” implies a larger breadth of freedom, something that was noticeable in the publisher’s 2015 output of comics under the DC You banner. The branding may have only lasted a year, but there were some genuinely interesting concepts to come out of some books, like the super-spy world of Grayson and Jim Gordon becoming a heavily-armored Batman. There would be no better way to establish these films are separate from the DCEU than to just declare that nothing is really off the table. A Midnighter and Apollo film would be an amazing opportunity to blend a relevant character study with the over-the-top movie violence audiences love, or maybe go skew a little younger and corner the YA crowd by adapting the adventures of Gotham Academy.

The bottom line is, if f DC and Warner Bros. play their cards right, this could pay off in a big way. Hitting a home run with just one non-DCEU movie may finally break Hollywood from willfully subjugating itself to the restraints of cinematic universes that have kneecapped potential franchises such as Universal’s Dark Universe and Sony’s previous attempt at launching a Spider-Man cinematic universe with Amazing Spider-Man 2 three years ago. Thanks to Deadpool and Logan, it’s been proven that fans will just accept a movie’s continuity can simply be the one they’re currently watching. More than their distinguished competition, DC can definitely take advantage of this and put out some great films.

And as far as a banner for all these movies to sit under? Well, how about something like DC Elseworlds? It has a certain ring to it...