The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe—actually, you know what? We’re not doing Black Adam memes again. The memes may be evergreen, but new eras of the DC universe can awaken only so many times before the jokes start sounding stale.
On Monday morning, ahead of Skydance’s first quarterly earnings report, news broke that James Gunn and Peter Safran were out as the creative and financial architects, respectively, of the cinematic/televised DC Universe. Gunn and Safran, who took control four years ago this month, were initially said to be secure following the completion of Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery last month. But Skydance CEO David Ellison had a different DC Studios head in mind: Jeremy Latcham, a producer best known for his time at Marvel Studios, where he helped Kevin Feige found the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and played a part in hiring Gunn as director of Guardians of the Galaxy) before going independent in 2017.
Gunn’s Instagram post on Monday made the switch sound semi-voluntary. He called his time at DC “trying, to say the least,” acknowledged that he “dislike[d] the at-times corporate nature of the job,” and described himself as “incredibly relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking.” Gunn may well feel relieved, but subsequent reporting confirmed that he was relieved of his duties, when Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz informed him and Safran of their ouster days (or, per one report, less than one day) before the announcement. Gunn and Latcham hadn’t yet talked about a transition plan when the world was greeted (and floored) by the same Skydance directive that had taken Gunn and Safran by surprise.
In stark contrast to the outspoken Gunn, a prolific poster, Latcham, the new president and chief creative officer of DC Studios, didn’t have a Wikipedia page until Monday. Now he has a mandate to engineer the kind of consistent success that has long eluded DC’s live-action adaptations. And it sounds as if Skydance is scrapping most of the “eight- to 10-year plan” for the DCU that Gunn and Safran alluded to in 2022 and detailed in 2023. As Puck’s Matt Belloni (who hosts the Ringer podcast The Town) noted in his newsletter, “plans are already afoot to dismantle much of what Gunn and Safran had plotted out beyond next summer’s Gunn-directed Man of Tomorrow, the currently shooting The Batman: Part II, and an in-the-works HBO series. So DC goes back into reboot mode … again.”
Several outlets—including The Hollywood Reporter, Puck, Variety, and TheWrap—published behind-the-scenes accounts of the palace intrigue that preceded DC’s latest do-over. Sift through the anonymously sourced spin and score-settling, and several reasons for the leadership shift emerge. Gunn and Safran previously reported directly to WBD CEO David Zaslav, and their contracts called for less oversight than Skydance Motion Picture Group co-chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg desired. Gunn and Safran, meanwhile, were accustomed to autonomy and chafed at the prospect of fettered creative control.
If Gunn and Safran had delivered nothing but blockbusters, Skydance likely would’ve left them alone, but their track record was mixed, both in critical acclaim and popular appeal. In live-action TV, Peacemaker’s second season flopped, while Lanterns’ first (and possibly only) set of episodes garnered strong but not sensational viewership. On the big screen, Gunn’s wholesome Superman—a full-circle return to Christopher Reeve–era uplift after the grimdark Supes of DC’s Snyderverse period—was well-received but not the best box-office springboard for a cinematic universe; Supergirl became a contentious bomb; and Clayface did fine for a modestly budgeted film that featured a C-tier Batman villain. Batman’s DCU debut was still years away, which was part of the perceived problem: Gunn’s affection for niche characters produced projects (such as Creature Commandos and upcoming mockumentary The People v. Gorilla Grodd) with limited mainstream reach. Several other Gunn-era shows and movies based on low-profile figures died during development.
Throw in a gaping political divide between the liberal Gunn and the right-leaning, Trump-approved Ellison, Ellison’s possible preference for Latcham’s family-friendly style of storytelling, and the difficulty Gunn faced in filling dual roles as distinctive auteur and studio delegator, and we can construct a neat story about why Skydance pursued a third DC shake-up following the successive stints of the Jon Berg/Geoff Johns duo and Walter Hamada, who respectively presided over the DC Extended Universe for a shorter time and a slightly longer time than Gunn and Safran steered the DCU.
But DC’s pattern of pivoting goes deeper than that. Beneath those proximate causes lies the original sin no head of DC Studios (or its predecessor, DC Films) could hope to absolve. Decades ago, DC squandered its chance to start the on-screen superhero-universe craze. Marvel moved first and reaped the rewards. And DC has been trying to catch up ever since, with neither the creative continuity nor the wide-open cinematic market that allowed the MCU to flourish. Each time DC resets, its task of channeling the latent potential that Marvel seized and developed in the 2000s grows even more daunting. DC Studios should, by all means, aim to make good movies and shows. But 20 years after Superman returned in, uh, Superman Returns, maybe DC should stop trying to make a cohesive universe happen.
In 2022, as the DCEU wound down, Black Adam star Dwayne Johnson said, “I feel very confident about the direction of the DC universe. It is going to require real strategy and real leadership. And that requires us not to look at Marvel’s success and say, let’s follow that blueprint. That’s Marvel. I’m very happy for them. We don’t want to be Marvel, in my opinion. We want to be DC and we want to do it our way.”
Judging by Black Adam (and, for that matter, most of his movies since), whatever the Rock’s way was wouldn’t have been a winner. But DC’s way has led to uneven output and plenty of turnover at the top. And by all appearances, DC does want to be Marvel, but with Batman, Superman, and the Justice League instead of their MCU analogs. After WBD poached Gunn from the MCU, Skydance is now looking to Marvel veteran Latcham in the hope that he can summon superhero lightning (not the Black Adam kind) for the second time. Latcham and Greenstein collaborated on the production and marketing, respectively, of such MCU offerings as Iron Man and Spider-Man: Homecoming; maybe they can make movie magic happen again.
When it comes to comics, DC has claimed more market share than Marvel for four consecutive quarters, thanks to the success of the Absolute line, which is set in a separate continuity from the main print universe. But at the movies, Marvel remains the Sorcerer Supreme. You can’t blame DC, or its corporate parents, for wanting a windfall like the one Marvel movies have generated since 2008’s Iron Man. Notwithstanding recent stumbles and slowdowns at the multiplex and on streaming—before this year’s lucrative combo of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday, plus a well-regarded ending to the WandaVision trilogy via VisionQuest—the MCU is the top-grossing film franchise of all time by a massive margin. No conglomerate worth its antitrust challenge would pass up an opportunity or two to make that many billions.
Especially, perhaps, in this case, because somewhere in the multiverse, DC already did. Before Blade, X-Men, Spider-Man, and the other early, pre-MCU movies based on Marvel characters—even before Howard the Duck—there were movies starring Superman and Batman. DC established a beachhead on the big screen long before its traditional rival, and Richard Donner’s Superman, the first modern, big-budget blockbuster, beat Blade to theaters by 20 years. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where DC beat Marvel to a -CU, too.
In the early 2000s, Warner Bros. seriously considered bringing Superman and Batman back to the screen together. Superman had been missing from multiplexes since 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace; Bruce Wayne had been lurking in the big-screen Batcave since the fourth Warner Bros. Batman movie, 1997’s Batman & Robin. Warners was planning to reboot both franchises separately, but screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, fresh off Se7en and Sleepy Hollow, proposed that Supes and Bats be brought back together, in a Batman vs. Superman event movie designed to dispel the stink from each character’s fourth-film flop.
A script was written (and later leaked); a director was attached (Wolfgang Petersen, of Das Boot, The Perfect Storm, and Air Force One fame); a release date was set (summer 2004). Christian Bale came close to booking the part … of Superman. (Plot twist!) But the movie wasn’t to be: A J.J. Abrams script for a solo Superman movie convinced the studio to keep the characters separated and revive them in Batman Begins and Superman Returns.
If you’re mad that we missed out on the 2004 version of Batman vs. Superman, you can add Abrams’s never-produced Superman script to his list of fiction offenses, along with the well-meaning crimes he’s committed against Star Trek and Star Wars. On the bright side, because that 2004 team-up wasn’t made, Bale became Batman in Christopher Nolan’s excellent trilogy, and Petersen directed Troy. The downside is that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice exists.
Batman vs. Superman wasn’t the only almost-movie-meeting of those iconic characters that predated Snyder’s 2016 stinker, or the only “What if?” we can ask about an alternate timeline of DC dominance. In 2007, Mad Max maker George Miller, who had just helmed Happy Feet, was set to direct a Justice League movie known as Justice League: Mortal. The fully cast would-be blockbuster, which a 2017 THR article hyperbolically labeled “one of the great lost films of our times,” would have introduced new versions of Batman and Superman and, in theory, set up spinoffs featuring Wonder Woman, the Flash, and other heroes.
Late last month, Gunn affirmed the DCU’s commitment to “diamond characters” Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman—the last of whom is rumored to be played by Adria Arjona in Man of Tomorrow. But Gunn may have spent too much time for Skydance’s taste contemplating the possibility of (for instance) a series starring Polka-Dot Man from The Suicide Squad. His successor will almost certainly focus on the name-brand heroes who’ve proved more resistant to superhero fatigue. According to TheWrap, Latcham is “expected to get films for Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and other heavyweights going” in order “to get the Justice League back on the big screen as soon as possible.”
In a world where George Miller got to go ahead with his DC tentpole, the JLA would have graced the screen sooner—and maybe the League never would have left. As a 2022 MovieWeb post observed, “Had Warner Bros. released Justice League: Mortal, there is a question [of whether] the DCEU as it exists today would ever have happened or if they would still be making spinoffs and sequels to this Justice League film.”
We’ll never know; a writers’ strike, a holdup involving Australian tax credits, and other complications scuttled the project. Maybe the movie would’ve been worse than 2017’s Justice League, pre-“Snyder Cut.” But maybe, just maybe, it could’ve come together, debuted as intended in 2009, and stolen some of the fledgling MCU’s thunder by arriving between the disappointing The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2. Granted, the MCU succeeded in part because it built up to a crossover climax, rather than beginning with one. But if Justice League: Mortal had been a huge hit, the movie might have disrupted Marvel’s momentum and made it look like Feige (and Latcham) had buried the lede. Hey, it has to be one of the many millions of futures that were possible back then.
Viewed in that light, why wouldn’t DC cry over spilled superheroes? The company could have been an early adopter of the formula that made Marvel a fortune, instead of coming along late and suffering from little-brother syndrome.
If you’ll indulge a baseball analogy—in honor of a recent Batman/Superman crossover comic, let’s say—DC’s latest attempt to craft an MCU-style interconnected narrative is a little like White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s decision to rehire Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa in 2020, decades after firing him in 1986. In the interim, La Russa won six pennants and three championships with the A’s and Cardinals, as Reinsdorf rued dismissing him. Luring La Russa out of retirement a decade after his final season in St. Louis was Reinsdorf’s attempt to make up for his mistake. But by then, the game had changed (as had La Russa), and bringing back the legend had less-than-legendary results.
Of course, La Russa’s squads might not have been so successful had he stayed in Chicago for his whole career. Regardless, Reinsdorf’s mulligan was too little La Russa, too late.
DC’s re-re-reboot might be, too. In early 2023, The Ringer’s Daniel Chin provided four recommendations for rebuilding DC’s cinematic universe. In late 2026, my recommendation—assuming Skydance does erase the roadmap Gunn had drawn—is not to rebuild it at all. Make great movies. Tell intriguing tales. Worry about tying them together later, if at all.
Comics readers may have a near-infinite tolerance for reboots and relaunches, but moviegoers might not, particularly since DC’s stewards have lacked the performance and patience to stay on a compelling, interconnected course. They haven’t played the long game and earned audiences’ trust, and they haven’t laid out the history that made it so satisfying for longtime MCU stans to see [redacted] in the VisionQuest finale, almost 20 years and 40 movies into Marvel’s six-Phase saga. Even if everything goes right, it’s a little late in the superhero-movie game to get an ambitious new narrative off the ground.
The good news is that even without finishing the first chapter of the DCU, DC has enough ingredients to get a stew going without starting from scratch. HBO’s DC IP plays Watchmen, The Penguin, and Lanterns are largely standalone stories, and no less satisfying for it. DC animation never slumps. When we have Robert Battinson, must we have a second helping of live-action Caped Crusader, just to check the Batman box in the DCU? Clayface is so distinct from the Superfilms in story, tone, and genre that it only nominally belongs to a “shared” universe anyway. DC fans could feast on a girl dinner/boy kibble smorgasbord of sequels, one-offs, and occasional crossovers, each serving of which would be easily digestible.
Does DC need what Safran described in 2023 as “one beautiful big story across film, television, gaming, live-action, and animation,” if a bunch of beautiful smaller stories would suffice? After so many false starts, maybe the most powerful change in the DC universe would be not having a hierarchy at all. How’s that for a new era’s awakening?
