The ship is going down. Women, children, and actors with a chance of salvaging their careers into the lifeboats first.

News has emerged today that following the failure to negotiate a Henry Cavill cameo in Shazam! (of all things), the Man of Steel actor is to part ways with Warner Bros, swiftly bringing an end to Clark Kent in the DCEU. I’m no Superman fan, but that’s pretty bad news.

But of course all of this is just the latest in an unending saga of people and projects who don’t know whether they’re coming or going (is Chris McKay’s Nightwing film still happening or what?). It’s been rumoured since his ousting as director for the Batman solo film that Ben Affleck has been slowly edging towards the door, and along with the news that he won’t be involved in Matt Reeve’s The Batman in any capacity, it seems like the perfect time to make a break for it, hot on the heels of Cavill.

So for those keeping track, that’s a DC franchise without Superman and Batman, a creative lead, or any sense of direction at all. How a Hollywood juggernaut like Warner Bros has managed to screw this up quite so spectacularly is genuinely bewildering – these scripts write themselves even after a brief glance at the Batman Wikipedia entry.

While the decision-makers behind the recently renamed (pointlessly so, at this rate) Worlds of DC have a lot to answer for, our hands aren’t clean as fans either.

After a good three or four viewings of the Dawn of Justice extended cut, I’m entirely happy to call it the best Batman film ever. It is visually stunning, Affleck is perfect casting, and it is the closest thing to the Batman of the comics since the Arkham City video game.

Yet Zack Snyder was slated mercilessly by critics and fans alike, who were absolutely unwilling to allow this film to set up the wider universe. So much so that when his involvement with Justice League came to an abrupt end (under tragic circumstances), WB jumped on the opportunity – aided by Avengers brainbox Joss Whedon – to dismantle any sort of world or character building that Snyder had been wrestling with executives to develop, and re-cut the thing into a hokey mess devoid of any sort of purpose and recoloured into some Lucozade-orange nightmare*.

The difference between Dawn of Justice and Justice League is literally like night and day.

The DCEU’s desperation to have circa 2012 MCU success without doing any of the groundwork is what’s led to this mess. We now have a slate of self-contained movies which I’m sure will be perfectly fine (Shazam! looks like it could be a lot of fun), but I’m ready to call time of death on the idea of them ever getting back to a Marvel style story arc. It had so much promise, but with Batman and Superman out of the picture, I really don’t know how they’re going to save it.

I’m gutted.

*The devout amongst you in this here congregation will note that the only bit in Dawn of Justice with an orange colour palette is indeed the ‘Knightmare’ sequence – go figure.