8 DCEU Spin-Offs We Could Get After The Trench

Ever since Warner Bros. decided to soften the interconnected elements of the DCEU and focus on world-building, they’ve announced some unusual new movies. One that’s gotten fans talking is a horror movie about The Trench, which signals the studio’s intentions to make entire movies out of the smallest characters in their most popular DC movies.

From the main villains to the supporting heroes to the law enforcement officials who put together Task Force X, there’s a ton of characters in this franchise who deserve their own movie – some more so than The Trench. So, here are 8 DCEU Spin-Offs We Could Get After The Trench.

Gotham P.D.

While Zack Snyder’s DCEU movies have a lot of detractors, there were a few things they got right. Two of them were the beautiful portrayal of Gotham City with all the luminous noir influences that made the setting look like a gothic dream, and J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. Combine those two things and what do you get? A pitch-perfect Gotham P.D. spin-off!

The tone would be right, the pre-existing sumptuous visuals could be taken advantage of, and some chilling tales of Gotham’s criminals could be told through the eyes of the police opposed to the eyes of the Caped Crusader.

BvS prequel

Joker's message on Robin's suit in Batman V Superman

As soon as fans saw the Robin Easter egg in Batman v Superman, they wanted to know the full story. There was a Batsuit with the words “HAHAH joke’s on you, Batman!” spray-painted on it. How did the Joker kill Robin? Which Robin was it? Fans deserve to know exactly what happened in the DCEU’s past to set up that Easter egg.

It doesn’t have to be Ben Affleck’s Batman or Jared Leto’s Joker. We just want to know what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. It would be interesting to see a younger DCEU Batman full of optimism and belief in the pursuit of justice before he lost Robin and became the angry, cynical, violent pessimist we see in BvS.

Parademons

As long as we’re getting a horror movie about The Trench, the creepy creatures from Aquaman, we might as well get a horror movie about the Parademons, the creepy creatures from Justice League. Maybe not a whole movie about the Parademons themselves, but maybe a movie about some characters being terrorized by them.

If it’s done right, this could be the DCEU’s answer to something like A Quiet Place or even 10 Cloverfield Lane. This species has the makings of a classic movie monster – why doesn’t DC get a modern horror visionary like David Robert Mitchell or Andy Muschietti to really make that the case?

The Phantom Zone

Man of Steel delved very deep into the mythology and society of Krypton in its opening act – some would say too deep. But the good thing about that is that it opened up the planet to a wide range of characters and settings that can be exploited for future stories. One of them is the Phantom Zone, the prison in subspace that General Zod is initially sent to.

It could be a sci-fi prison movie, like Star Wars meets The Shawshank Redemption. The story could follow a Kryptonian who is wrongly imprisoned with all the sick, evil, rightly imprisoned people. The Phantom Zone has a rich history in the comics that could be beautifully realized on film.

Steve Trevor

The people at Warner Bros. are clearly fond of Chris Pine’s Wonder Woman character Steve Trevor, because they’ve brought him back for the sequel despite it being set 70 years later and Steve dying in the last one.

So, why not make a spin-off that fills in the interim between those two movies, so we can see what he was up to? Or a movie that simply expands on his World War I adventures and gives us some more backstory? We already know that Pine can anchor a middle-of-the-road summer tentpole from the Star Trek reboot trilogy and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Knightmare

This one could even star Ben Affleck if it’s legal to use footage you have of someone in a movie after they’ve left the franchise (it’s probably very complicated). Remember the weird “Knightmare” sequence in Batman v Superman that stops the movie dead? Well, Zack Snyder’s original three-hour cut of Justice League was going to explain all that before Joss Whedon came in and turned it into half cheese-fest and half murky mess.

So, the footage is out there, and while the sequence itself in BvS was criticized and has become infamous, that was only due to its random and seemingly irrelevant place in the story. It had incredible visuals and seemed to get scarier as it devolved – no one can deny it would be cool to see a whole movie of Batman fighting monsters in a post-apocalyptic wasteland in his own mind.

Arkham Asylum

Let’s see a movie about the ins and outs of Arkham Asylum. Suicide Squad did very little right, but it did set up Arkham Asylum as a rich DCEU setting full of psychotic criminals and potential for future movies. Margot Robbie and maybe Jared Leto can cameo in it, and also perhaps the new Batman (whoever they are) can also have a small role.

However, it would be fun if this didn’t focus too heavily on the bigger characters and put some minor ones from the comics like Victor Zsasz and Hugo Strange in the spotlight. As long as Warner Bros. are doing The Trench as a horror movie, why not do an Arkham Asylum horror movie?

Themyscira

With Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen eager to continue playing their deceased Wonder Woman characters, it would be fun to see the Amazon women of Themyscira fighting epic Lord of the Rings-style battles without the aid of Diana Prince, either before she was born or after she went off into the wider world.

This could make up for the lack of female representation in the fantasy and action genres with a whole army of badass women. Wonder Woman did this in a small way with scenes like the beach battle and Diana going into No Man’s Land, but this could be a whole movie of that stuff.