James Gunn’s DCU: What Parts Should Be Kept, And Which Should Go?
James Gunn and Peter Safran are out at DC Studios. Jeremy Latcham is the new president and chief creative officer.
What happens now?
In the short term, probably nothing. DC still has Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow due in theaters next summer. If things don’t fall any further behind schedule, The Batman Part II follows in early 2028.
In the long term, things get murkier. When Gunn and Safran first joined DC Studios as co-CEOs, they announced an ambitious plan for ten interconnected movies and TV shows, most of which never saw the light of day. Later they announced more projects that weren’t even part of their original slate. The fate of all those films and shows remains cloudy.
DC fans are nothing if not opinionated, and as DC fans here at ScreenCrush we have a few of our own to share. If the company asked for our feedback on the DC Universe so far, and what aspects of it should stay and which should go, here’s what we would say....
KEEP: The Superman Franchise Going
Gunn and Safran’s DCU got off to a great start with Superman, a colorful, upbeat, and hopeful superhero movie that understood the Man of Steel down to his inspirational core. Gunn did a superb job filling out Superman’s cast. David Corenswet wasn’t just a beefy hunk in a blue suit; he radiated that innate goodness that’s essential to the character’s timeless appeal. Superman also featured arguably the best cinematic Lex Luthor to date (Nicholas Hoult) and the best Jimmy Olsen too (Sklyer Gisondo).
Gunn’s already got Man of Tomorrow coming next summer. If it does well, DC should let him keep making Superman movies as long as he wants.
READ MORE: Who Is Jeremy Latcham, the New Head of DC Studios?
CHANGE: The Focus on Obscure DC Characters
Actually did Gunn and Safran’s DCU get off to a great start? Technically, their first project wasn’t Superman, it was the HBO Max series Creature Commandos, an animated show about a group of monsters who work as a black ops team for the Suicide Squad’s leader, Amanda Waller. The team is so obscure a lot of active DC fans had never read one of their comics.
Creature Commandos wasn’t an isolated example, either. Gunn and Safran also made Clayface, a dark horror film about a relatively unknown Batman villain, and just a few months ago there were reports that they were also developing a film focused on two more DC baddies, Deathstroke and Bane. Meanwhile they left all sorts of better-known heroes and villains on the sidelines.
During Gunn’s time at Marvel he showed the value of great storytelling wedded to lesser-known superheroes. The Guardians of the Galaxy were at best a C-level property before Gunn got his hands on them. But Marvel had already established a pretty sturdy foundation with films like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor before they got to Guardians. Starting a new DC Universe with the Creature Commandos is like making a Clayface movie before you introduce Batman! Who would do something like that??
KEEP: Aaron Pierre's John Stewart
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Lanterns, but I loved Aaron Pierre and his gruff, take-no-s— performance as John Stewart. He will supposedly return as the character in Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow and I look forward to seeing him there. I don’t know if I need another season of Lanterns if it’s going to continue to deemphasize the characters’ powers and depict the entire Lantern Corps as a bunch of unfeeling killers. But a Lanterns season focused on John Stewart as he tries to do right with his Power Ring sounds good to me.
CHANGE: Just Make The Batman the DCU Batman
I know that The Batman predated Gunn and Safran’s tenure at DC Studios, and their plan was always to develop their own Batman movie (titled The Brave and the Bold) and cast a new actor as their Dark Knight.
Beyond the obvious fact that Gunn and Safran didn’t have a hand in developing and designing Robert Pattinson’s Batman, I have never understood why they couldn’t just grandfather The Batman into their DCU the same way they grandfathered Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker into it. I actually think Corenswet’s upbeat Superman and Pattinson’s moody Caped Crusader would make for a perfect onscreen contrast, and you’ve already got The Batman Part II coming in 2028 anyway. Throw a Corenswet cameo in after the credits and see what happens. If the Batmobile ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
KEEP: The People v Gorilla Grodd
While I do think DC could stand to emphasize more of its flagship characters, I do hope they follow through with the recently announced The People v Gorilla Grodd series for HBO Max, which they described as an “eight-part “true” crime docuseries” about “the Daily Planet’s Jimmy Olsen ... investigating whether Gorilla Grodd was wrongly convicted in one of Metropolis’ most famous murder trials.”
As I already said, I really enjoyed Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen, and would love to see him in his own show — let alone a show that’s a legal thriller about an intrepid reporter helping a talking gorilla. It also sounds like the kind of premise that only a risk-taking, DC Comics-loving nerd like James Gunn would greenlight. The odds of the new regime taking a chance on something as weird as TPvGG in the future seems very low, so I hope this one manages to make it onto streaming.
CHANGE: There Should Only Be One DC Universe
When Gunn and Safran took the job at DC, they announced their own slate of ten interconnected movies and shows that would also be set in one shared universe. DC projects started before their tenure — like The Batman or Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel — were branded as “Elseworlds” projects, a term DC uses for alternate reality stories set in different corners of their comic-book multiverse.
Respectfully, I think I speak for a lot of comic-book fans when I say that the multiverse feels a little played out right now. And I am certain I speak for a lot of casual moviegoers who do not want lectures from goobers like me why Robert Pattinson and David Corenswet can’t meet, or why Joaquin Phoenix‘s Joker has nothing to do Robert Pattinson’s Batman.
If Hollywood is going to persist in building large cinematic universe, then they should aim to make them as streamlined and as easy to understand as possible. Gunn and Safran’s notion that they could have two Batmans at the same time, or a new sequel to Keanu Reeves’ Constantine that’s totally separate from Superman or Supergirl or the Justice League, seems like a recipe for audience confusion and disinterest.
