Jeff Robinov confirmed to the Wall Street Journal, that Warner Bros will reboot the Superman franchise.

“Superman [Returns] didn’t quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to,” said Robinov. “It didn’t position the character the way he needed to be positioned. Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009. But now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all.”

No word on if Bryan Singer will still be involved or not. Lets just hope George Miller isn’t involved.

Warner Bros will begin to refocus on bigger tentpole movies, hoping to release as many as eight big movies a year by 2011. Robinov hopes that two out of those eight films will be DC comic book adaptations. This basically mimics the move made by Marvel Studios. Warner Bros is expected to announce their upcoming line-up of DC movies in the next month. But for now the plan is to produce four comic book films in the next three years. This would likely include a third Batman film and the Superman reboot. The success of The Dark Knight has convinced Robinov thatt building more realistic superheroes with darker stories may be the key to box office gold.

“We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it,” he said.

This is a good move for some films, but I hope they take the time to assess each comic property on its own. I can certainly see a darker Superman. One of the many lessons learned from Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns is that the audiences want something different. I feel that his fan-boy like faithfulness to the Richard Donner films prevented the series from creating it’s own identity.

I suggested in my last post the possibility of hiring Jonathan Nolan to give a new spin on the character. Most comments were critical of this idea, but I still think it’s the best way to go. Superman doesn’t need to be set in the Nolanverse, but he needs a new take, and a screenwriter who will treat the character with respect, but at the same time won’t feel afraid to stray from the source material or ideas set up in the previous film adaptations. I think it might also be fun to eventually create one-off films, possibly something like Mark Millar’s Red Son.