Why You Should Stop Saying 'DC Extended Universe'

Nobody at DC does, for starters.

By ChrisXMorgan

While Marvel has the officially known Marvel Cinematic Universe, Warner Bros. and DC's collection of interconnected films like, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman, has been commonly referred to as the DC Extended Universe. But a new report has revealed the DCEU name is not only unofficial, it was created by a reporter as a joke before gaining traction.

This revelation comes from Abraham Riesman, who recently wrote an extensive piece about DC's movie landscape and the changes being made to it for Vulture. As part of Riesman's research, he discovered Entertainment Weekly writer Keith Staskiewicz is the first person to have coined the DCEU term in 2015.

A thread of tweets from Riseman pointed to a 2015 EW article in which Staskiewicz wrote "a whole slew of other attractions on the DC Extended Universe (TM)," which the author said "was my own phrasing when I used it in the story. Just seemed like the kind of thing they'd call it!"

"I just looked back on the piece now and noticed the (in-my-mind) sardonic little trademark symbol I gave it. Whoops," Staskiewicz told Riseman while reflecting on the DCEU article.

While Marvel very much uses the phrase "Marvel Cinematic Universe" to discuss their films, evidently DC, according to Riseman, has never officially or internally used DCEU in any capacity.

Confusion arose earlier this year about what classifies as a "DCEU" movie — or at least, what films are tied into the continuity of the already released DC films — when reports revealed a Joker origin film is currently in the works with a new actor planned to play the Joker. However the early reports explain the film is part of a new, upcoming imprint of films meant to tell one-off stories centered around iconic characters. An update about that film's progress was also recently revealed.

The next Warner Bros./DC film set to be released is Justice League on November 17 —  read up on the new dynamic between Batman and Wonder Woman, and see why former director Zack Snyder has chosen to keep his distance from the film since stepping down due to a family tragedy.

And after the box office success of the most recently released DC film Wonder Woman, director Patty Jenkins will return to direct Wonder Woman 2.

Chris Morgan is the author of The Comic Galaxy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Ash Heap of History. Wisely or not, he's also on Twitter.

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