Ezra Miller stars as Barry Allen in Warner Bros.’ “The Flash.”
Warner Bros. Discovery
“The Flash” is a flop. “Black Adam” was a bust. And does anyone remember “Shazam: Fury of the Gods”?
DC Studios needs more than a hero, it needs a new strategy – something different than even its recently established reboot plan.
DC and its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, have Marvel Cinematic Universe envy. It’s easy to see why. The MCU’s movies, including ones that haven’t been released by Disney, have grossed about $30 billion worldwide since 2008. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has directed DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran to create their own shared universe involving iconic characters like Batman and Superman.
The problem is, Warner Bros. and DC are already working through the tail end of a previous – and failed – attempt to tie their characters together through multiple films and shows. At the movies, DC’s Justice League just can’t measure up against Marvel’s Avengers.
The likely answer to Warner Bros. and DC’s issues is right in front of them, though: Character-specific franchises that adhere to one filmmaker’s vision, not a TV-style writers room. Basically, let your heroes fly solo.
It’s worked for DC properties before, even recently.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, which wrapped in 2012, was a well-reviewed box office juggernaut. And even though they were both connected to the prior attempt at creating a DC movie universe, 2017’s “Wonder Woman” and 2018’s “Aquaman” focused mainly on their title characters and racked up big bucks and accolades in the process.
To put an even finer point on it, look no further than the financial and critical success of Todd Phillips’ “Joker” and Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Neither movie is connected to an extended universe.
“Joker,” released in 2019, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide despite being rated R, while racking up a best actor Oscar for star Joaquin Phoenix. Last year’s “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson as an early-career Caped Crusader, garnered around $750 million globally. Sequels to both movies are in the works.
But so is “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” from “Flash” director Andy Muschietti. It will not star Pattinson and will instead serve as “the introduction of the DCU Batman,” according to Gunn. How many different Batmen does an already-superhero-saturated moviegoing audience need? Especially after “The Flash,” which featured four different Dark Knights from previous movies and shows.
Fun vs. homework
Marvel Studios’ “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
Disney
Comic books were once a refuge from homework. Now, to keep up with everything going on in Disney’s MCU and Sony’s Spider-Verse, which is also connected to the MCU, you need to have watched pretty much everything that came before to get up to speed. That’s dozens of movies and shows, going back to the original Robert Downey Jr. “Iron Man.”
“The Flash,” meanwhile, might be the most intense comic book movie pop quiz, even though DC’s cinematic universe has been all over the place. It’s jam-packed with cameos (some real, some CGI-generated) from past DC movies and shows, going all the way back to George Reeves’ black-and-white Superman.
But in order to understand all the gags, you have to be really into this stuff. Unless you’re a big fan of “Clerks” director Kevin Smith – big enough of a fan to have watched his standup specials, that is – a “Flash” sequence involving a Nicolas Cage version of Superman fighting a giant spider might be lost on you. The movie’s punchline, involving George Clooney returning to the role of Bruce Wayne 26 years after the badly received “Batman and Robin,” is clearly geared toward Gen-Xers and older Millennials, not today’s younger audiences.
Even the MCU model has tripped up at times. Disney CEO Bob Iger himself has suggested that the studio was going to the well too often with certain characters, after the fourth Thor film and third Ant-Man installment underwhelmed at the box office. That should be another warning sign for DC Studios.
For his part, DC’s Gunn recently acknowledged that there are “too many” superhero movies and shows. If anyone can come up with a creative way to change course, it’s him.
After working with schlock factory Troma Films early on, Gunn built a sturdy Hollywood career as a writer and director, alternating between R-rated flicks like “Slither” and stuff for general audiences, like his Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel and Disney. The third entry in that series snapped the MCU out of its mini funk. It’s so far the second-highest-grossing movie of 2023, behind Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
And he already has a couple DC works on his resume: the 2020 movie “The Suicide Squad” and its 2022 companion series, “Peacemaker,” both of which won wide acclaim.
Gunn is writing and directing “Superman: Legacy,” due in 2025. It’s intended to usher in the new DC shared universe. But there’s still time for him to reconsider his approach and let the Man of Steel – and all the other DC heroes – be super on their own.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of Universal and CNBC.
Amazon’s new MK30 Prime Air drone is displayed during Amazon’s “Delivering the Future” event at the company’s BFI1 Fulfillment Center, Robotics Research and Development Hub in Sumner, Washington on Oct. 18, 2023.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon is facing a federal probe after one of its delivery drones downed an internet cable in central Texas last week.
The probe comes as Amazon vies to expand drone deliveries to more pockets of the U.S., more than a decade after it first conceived the aerial distribution program, and faces stiffer competition from Walmart, which has also begun drone deliveries.
The incident occurred on Nov. 18 around 12:45 p.m. Central in Waco, Texas. After dropping off a package, one of Amazon’s MK30 drones was ascending out of a customer’s yard when one of its six propellers got tangled in a nearby internet cable, according to a video of the incident viewed and verified by CNBC.
The video shows the Amazon drone shearing the wire line. The drone’s motor then appeared to shut off and the aircraft landed itself, with its propellers windmilling slightly on the way down, the video shows. The drone appeared to remain in tact beyond some damage to one of its propellers.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, a spokesperson confirmed. The National Transportation Safety Board said the agency is aware of the incident but has not opened a probe into the matter.
Amazon confirmed the incident to CNBC, saying that after clipping the internet cable, the drone performed a “safe contingent landing,” referring to the process that allows its drones to land safely in unexpected conditions.
“There were no injuries or widespread internet service outages. We’ve paid for the cable line’s repair for the customer and have apologized for the inconvenience this caused them,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, noting that the drone had completed its package delivery.
The incident comes after federal investigators last month opened a separate probe into a crash involving two of Amazon’s Prime Air drones in Arizona. The two aircrafts collided with a construction crane in Tolleson, a city west of Phoenix, prompting Amazon to temporarily halt drone deliveries in the area.
For over a decade, Amazon has been working to realize founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and other goods to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. The company began drone deliveries in 2022 in College Station, Texas, and Lockeford, California.
But progress has been slowed by a mix of regulatory hurdles, missed deadlines and layoffs in 2023 that coincided with broader cost-cutting efforts by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
The company has previously said its goal is to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.
The hexacopter-shaped MK30, the latest generation of Amazon’s Prime Air drone, is meant to be quieter, smaller and lighter than previous versions.
Amazon says the drones are equipped with a sense-and-avoid system that enables them to “detect and stay away from obstacles in the air and on the ground.” The company recommends that customers maintain “about 10 feet of open space” on their property so drones can complete deliveries
The company began drone deliveries in Waco earlier this month for customers within a certain radius of its same-day delivery site who order eligible items weighing 5 pounds or less. The drone deliveries are supposed to drop packages off in under an hour.
Amazon has brought other locations online in recent months, including Kansas City, Missouri, Pontiac, Michigan, San Antonio, Texas, and Ruskin, Florida. Amazon has also announced plans to expand drone deliveries to Richardson, Texas.
Walmart began offering drone deliveries in 2021, and currently partners with Alphabet’s Wing and venture-backed startup Zipline to make drone deliveries in a number of states, including in Texas.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) sports day event in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025.
Lam Yik Fei | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
Shares of artificial intelligence czar Nvidia fell 2.6% on Tuesday as signs of unrest continued rippling through its kingdom.
Over the month, Nvidia has been contending with concerns over lofty valuations and an argument from the “The Big Short” investor Michael Burry that companies may be overestimating the lifespan of Nvidia’s chips. That accounting choice inflates profits, he alleged.
The pressure intensified last week in the form of a potential challenger to the crown. Google on Nov. 18 announced the release of its new AI model Gemini 3 — so far so good, given that Nvidia isn’t in the business of designing large language models — powered by its in-house AI chips — uh–oh.
And on Monday stateside, Meta, a potential kingmaker, appeared to signal that it is considering not just leasing Google’s custom AI chips, but also using them for its own data centers. It seemed like Nvidia felt the need to address some of those rumblings.
The chipmaker said on the social media platform X that its technology is more powerful and versatile than other types of AI chips, including the so-called ASIC chips, such as Google’s TPUs. Separately, Nvidia issued a private memo to Wall Street that disputed Burry’s allegations.
Power, whether in politics or semiconductors, requires a delicate balance.
Remaining silent may shroud those in power in a cloak of untouchability, projecting confidence in their authority — but also aloofness. Deigning to address unrest can soothe uncertainty, but also, paradoxically, signal insecurity.
For now, the crown is Nvidia’s to wear — and the weight of it is, too.
What you need to know today
And finally…
Lights on in skyscrapers and commercial buildings on the skyline of the City of London, UK, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. U.K. business chiefs urged Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves to ease energy costs and avoid raising the tax burden on corporate Britain as she prepares this year’s budget.
The run-up to this year’s U.K. Autumn Budget has been different from the norm because so many different tax proposals have been floated, flagged, leaked and retracted in the weeks and months leading up to Wednesday’s statement.
It has also made it harder to gauge what we’re actually going to get when Finance Minister Rachel Reeves finally unveils her spending and taxation plans for the year ahead.
Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach, right, walks to the morning session during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 11, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Workday shares slid more than 5% in extended trading Tuesday after the finance and human resources software maker issued quarterly margin guidance that came in below Wall Street projections.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.32 adjusted vs. $2.18 expected
Revenue: $2.43 billion vs. $2.42 billion expected
The company forecast a fourth-quarter adjusted operating margin of at least 28.5% and $2.355 billion in subscription revenue, according to a statement. The StreetAccount consensus was a 28.7% margin and $2.35 billion in subscription revenue.
Workday’s revenue grew about 13% year over year in the quarter, which ended on Oct. 31. Net income of $252 million, or 94 cents per share, was up from $193 million, or 72 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Subscription revenue in the third quarter totaled $2.24 billion, with an adjusted operating margin of 28.5%. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had anticipated $2.24 billion in subscription revenue and a 28.1% margin.
During the fiscal third quarter, Workday announced artificial intelligence agents for analyzing employee performance testing financial health, and the company revealed plans to buy AI and learning software startup Sana for $1.1 billion. Also, activist investor Elliott Management said it had built a Workday stake worth over $2 billion.
Workday has seen its stock decline this year as pundits discuss the risk of generative AI tools threatening the growth prospects for cloud software incumbents. Company shares have fallen 9% so far in 2025, while the Nasdaq Composite index has gained 19%.