Firstly, lets start at the beginning which means.. Batman!. Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy franchise has to be up there with the most successful franchises of all time. The innovation in the movies, storylines and the characters are all perfect. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are set 1 year apart which is where most people believe the Third Installment will be set. With that in mind, you can now start to plan out your DC Universe which I will come to later.
Next up is Green Lantern which hits theatres June 17th, 2011 and is the first in a planned trilogy. Now Green Lantern features the introduction of Hal Jordan into the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps and is the first bit of public confirmation that aliens do exist. In the First Draft, when Hal Jordan begins to lose control over Hector Hammond, he returns to Oa for help which is when Parallax who had been captured escapes and Hal defeats him. Sinestro impressed, calls on all 3600 GL's to help Hal Jordan with his problem and all travel to earth to stop Hammond's madness. This confirms to humans that Aliens exist. At the end of the film, Hal returns to Oa with Sinestro to finish the training he started.
In the real world time, Green Lantern is released before Batman 3 and The Man of Steel but.. in the DC universe Batman 3 is set 6 months before Green Lantern. At the end of Green Lantern, the super hero disappears and crime begins to rise again. Which brings me onto..
The Man of Steel hitting theatres December 2012. Now rumours have Brainiac and Lex Luthor as the villains but the story is secret so this is where "rumours takes over Facts. But now is the part that is VERY plausable. When Hal Jordan leaves for Oa at the end of Green Lantern, this leaves open the space for Earth's greatest hero who will never leave, Superman. Green Lantern was in the public for only a couple of weeks before disappearing and while not exactly giving a public statement for why, Superman steps in and is the publics favourite hero.
Then films like The Flash, Wonder Woman and Aquaman will follow with the build up to the Justice League. Now the Justice League film can go 2 ways. It can be an introduction movie for the final Justice League founding member, Martian Manhunter and the villains can be the White Martians who come to earth and Martian Manhunter comes first to warn about the impending doom. He contacts Superman but they soon realise the scale of the invasion and soon a team of earth's greatest heroes form to stop the invading aliens.
Or it can go with the Darkseid storyline, same story of aliens total invasion of the planet but with Darkseid as the main villain and his minions.
To catch up here is a brief timeline of the movies release dates and the "in universe timeline":
2005 Batman Begins
2008 The Dark Knight
2011 Green Lantern
2012 Batman 3
2012 The Man of Steel
2013 The Flash
2013 Wonder Woman
2014 Aquaman
2014 Green Lantern 2
2015 Justice League
To set up the Justice League, I would have Aquaman released around March/April 2014 and would set the tone of the film much like Clash of the Titans, 300 sort of film with Green Lantern 2 release June 2014 which would feature Sinestro's downfall and Hal's return to earth at the end. Justice League would be summer 2015 with Superman 2 in December 2015.
Comments would be appreciated!