Butch Lukic has been a fixture of the DC Animated Universe for decades and, in recent years, he's been overseeing the "Tomorrowverse" as an executive producer.
As a result, he's overseen all 10 of those direct-to-DVD features, starting with Superman: Man of Tomorrow and culminating with the recently released Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Three. A great deal has changed since the former was released in 2020 and with DC Studios now looking to make a single, shared DCU, where does that leave these popular movies?
We asked Lukic about that earlier this week and he told us, "You never know. Right now, I couldn't say anything as far as what they want to do beyond these."
"Obviously, the James Gunn DC Universe is what's important right now; as far as anything to jump off of this stuff, I think it's very secondary," he explained, "so it's going to be more aligned to whatever the DCU is as James Gunn works it out."
While Watchmen is up next, it currently sounds like that might be it for these movies unless the plan is for them to continue under the "Elseworlds" banner. Normally at Comic-Con, we get a slate of animated DC projects for the following year, but don't be surprised if nothing is mentioned next weekend.
We also wondered how Lukic looks back at the Tomorrowverse and he confirmed that, even before DC Studios' formation, the plan was to tell a self-contained story over 10 movies.
"Well, originally, I wanted to do more than 10 movies which this ultimately was. I was hoping to keep things going and stretch things out so we could add more buildup for certain characters," he said. "It was decided that we'd get 10 movies and we'd need to get as much in there as we possibly could so they'd be cohesive."
"They gave us a 5-year plan which is what we did. We did it all in 5 years. 10 movies and the shorts. Originally, the previous universe was open-ended after 14, 15 years, but this time around, they wanted a definite start and a stop. And that's what we produced."
Check back here next week for the full interview with Butch, writer Jim Krieg, and stars Meg Donnelly and Elysia Rotaru.
Now fully revealed as the ultimate threat to existence, the Anti-Monitor wages an unrelenting attack on the surviving Earths that struggle for survival in a pocket universe. One by one, these worlds and all their inhabitants are vaporized! On the planets that remain, even time itself is shattered, and heroes from the past join the Justice League and their rag-tag allies against the epitome of evil. But as they make their last stand, will the sacrifice of the superheroes be enough to save us all?
Justice League Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part Three is produced by Jim Krieg and Kimberly S. Moreau and executive produced by Butch Lukic, Sam Register, and Michael Uslan. The film is directed by Jeff Wamester from a script by Jim Krieg. Casting and voice direction is by Wes Gleason.
The movie is now available on Digital platforms and arrives on 4K UHD in limited edition SteelBook packaging and Blu-ray on July 23.