James Gunn’s DC Universe Was Weird, Ambitious, and Ultimately Unfinished

The hierarchy of power at DC Studios is changing again. On November 9, news broke that writer-director James Gunn and his producing partner Peter Safran left—later reported as ousted from—their jobs as co-CEOs and co-chairmen of DC Studios. Jeremy Latcham, a former Marvel Studios producer whose past credits include The Avengers and Gunn’s own Guardians of the Galaxy, will replace them on December 1.Suddenly, DC fans woke up on a Monday to a new regime. But how will we look back on the four years that a prolific genre writer and director, who came up under Lloyd Kaufman’s B-movie studio Troma, oversaw an entire superhero universe?It was a time of a lot of promise, not all of it fulfilled.Before we start the eulogies for the DC Universe, it’s important to note that things aren’t over. Yet. Latcham will take over Gunn and Safran’s posts, so DC Studios is still up and running with more movies in the pipeline, many of which bear Gunn’s fingerprints. Man of Tomorrow, for example. The 2027 movie is a direct sequel to Superman, also written and directed by Gunn. Among its biggest moves is introducing a new Wonder Woman (rumored, but not confirmed, to be Adria Arjona). The Batman: Part II, the long-awaited sequel to Matt Reeves’s The Batman, will also open in 2028 with Gunn and Safran involved as producers. Gunn also said on Instagram they have been “engaged on another DC project which I’m writing.”Both Gunn and Safran are expected to stay at DC, with Deadline confirming they will “continue to produce on various DC projects.” That said, Matthew Belloni at Puck published a story citing sources who say the DCU will reboot, again, after Man of Tomorrow. And at The Hollywood Reporter, Borys Kit and Aaron Crouch detailed the friction Gunn faced while at the studio, and how Gunn and Safran’s exits were forced by new Skydance leaders David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz. THR reports the DC heads felt secure after the big Warner-Paramount merger; Clayface had grossed $100 million, and Gunn was preparing a draft for the third Superman movie when they were told they were out. You can say the DCU is in a crisis right now.For now, we can say that a critical chapter of DC is over. Gunn will no longer apply his vision and filter across all DC projects, which he must feel a little relieved about. By his own admission, which he wrote on Instagram on November 9, Gunn expressed feeling stretched thin, having to exert energy on movies and shows he wasn’t emotionally invested in to begin with. Said Gunn: “[T]he thing my ADHD hyperfocus has had the most difficulty with has been dividing my time between projects I’m incredibly passionate about and the ones I’m not so much and all the things I have to do as a studio head.”Gunn and Safran got their jobs in late 2022, but it wasn’t until 2024 that people saw the first glimpse of their reign. Though Gunn had already worked for DC on 2021’s The Suicide Squad and created the spin-off Peacemaker, those projects were separate from other things at DC, then run by Walter Hamada. At the time, its biggest bet was Black Adam, Dwayne Johnson’s long-in-development antihero project that fell flat and led to nowhere. When Gunn took the reins of DC soon after, the former Marvel director had carte blanche to tailor the sandbox to his vision.In January 2023, Gunn revealed his plans for DC Studios in something he called “Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters.” In a six-minute YouTube video, Gunn ran down his plans for the movies and shows that made up his master plan for the next decade of DC Studios. But for every mention of this movie or that HBO Max show, the first project carried significant weight. It was the first step, the real first impression, as a showcase of what Gunn would do with a DCU bent to his will. What icons would make it to the screen? What legend would get their spotlight? What iconic storylines might be retold on the big screen? What, really, will James Gunn’s DC become?His first order of business was... Creature Commandos.In fairness, Creature Commandos was a great show (if you saw it). It was an adult animated series where horror and pulp-inspired superheroes teamed up as a black ops strike force. While a show like that wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a great introduction, Gunn’s background as the writer of movies like Tromeo & Juliet and his success with Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel at least made sense. It basically said without ambiguity that this new DCU is being molded by no one else but Gunn.Then, Superman premiered in summer 2025. Initially written by Gunn, the DC Studios head eventually named himself the director of DC’s first theatrical release under his stewardship. Despite my own misgivings about the movie, it was the reorientation a refreshed superhero universe needed. You simply can’t have a DC Universe without the Man of Steel, whose first appearance in Action Comics #1 in 1938 kicked off the modern superhero as we know it.Superman made a solid first impression for DC at the cineplex. So there was plenty of optimism for the 2026 spin-off Supergirl starring Milly Alcock. Largely based on the acclaimed Tom King and Bilquis Evely graphic novel Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the pseudo-sequel was poised to keep up DC’s newfound momentum. It didn’t. Supergirl hit a wall, much like Black Adam. No superhero universe is immune to duds, but given it was just DC’s second time at bat, a blemish on what still felt like a new, fresh-out-of-the-box DCU felt grave.But one dud wasn’t enough to kneecap the DCU. The same summer saw the premiere of Lanterns, which fostered a faithful audience on HBO Sunday nights during its buzzy eight-episode first season. Despite mixed reviews, Clayface has grossed a profitable $100 million against a slim budget. Between the next Superman and Batman sequels, there was still plenty to look forward to. Until now.James Gunn’s reign wasn’t impervious to bad news either. Since his January 2023 reveal, many of the projects have wound up on the back burner: The Authority, which had been a “passion project” for Gunn (with plenty of setup for it in Superman); Waller, a TV show with Viola Davis reprising her role from the Suicide Squad films; Paradise Lost, a political epic set in Wonder Woman’s home; and Booster Gold, a superhero comedy about a goofball from the future. And throughout his reign, Gunn put up with questions about his Batman (not Matt Reeves’s), which he would have introduced in The Brave and the Bold. Gunn sweated over the character so much that a cameo of Batman in Creature Commandos was shrouded in shadow, because he said he was still deciding on what the costume was going to look like.HBOPeacemaker, James Gunn’s first TV show for DC, allowed the writer/director to flex his voice for the DCU after The Suicide Squad in 2021.Since the start of Gunn’s DC, it was clear his architecture came from a place of affection for the brand, and for very specific corners of it. His body of work reflected his scraggly upbringing as a punk creative, with empathy for characters who were too weird for their own Saturday morning cartoon. The Suicide Squad elevated such figures, like Weasel and Polka-Dot Man, whose climax involved a fight with Starro, a colossal evil starfish. Though his Superman was a sunny throwback to the Christopher Reeve classics, it was also jam-packed with the likes of Green Lantern, Mister Terrific, Metamorpho, and a villain Gunn was clearly setting up to be Bizarro.Multiple times on social media, Gunn shared artwork from one DC book in particular: Kingdom Come, written by Mark Waid and illustrated by Alex Ross. Published in 1996, the story was a treatise of sorts by Waid, who lamented the state of superhero comics at the time. The story sees an older Superman who comes out of retirement to reform the Justice League, only to meet physical and philosophical resistance—predominantly from Batman.Gunn’s allusions to Kingdom Come, including the exact shape of Superman’s “S” in his film, suggested he was laying the groundwork for a Kingdom Come-style event movie. It would have been an ambitious endeavor, oddly fitting to Gunn’s sensibilities. In the few years we saw Gunn at work for DC, he was building a universe where tried-and-true icons of superhero comics brushed up against the prickly and the bizarre. Where weirdness leaked from the orifices of a summer tentpole with an action figure set.It often feels like Gunn was just getting started, but four years with two (soon three) movies written and directed by him, several TV shows—and Supergirl and Clayface, whatever you think of them—leave a big enough impression to suggest that Gunn’s DC had no shortage of imagination, even if his signature flourishes had grown familiar. Not every superhero film needs to have shock F-bombs and action scenes set to ironic licensed music, but Gunn had a lane. He excelled at staying in it.It’s doubtful Gunn and Safran (who took on the business end of things) will stay on at DC under Skydance leadership for long. They will probably see Man of Tomorrow and The Batman: Part II through. If those movies do well, they might stick around to keep making movies, because for the most part, they have a magic that works. If the new movies fail to take off, then Gunn might finally find new stories to tell. It’s hard to say which path is the better one.Gunn’s Kingdom Come, whatever it might have been, pointed to a future that never became a promise. In his farewell message, Gunn wrote that “the characters we set up will live on.” Whether the next era will let the DCU stay weird is another matter.