Another DC reset on the cards: The James Gunn era of DC Studios is over before it had barely begun

Well, that was faster than The Flash.

The James Gunn era at DC Studios is over (more or less) with news Gunn and his producing partner Peter Safran will step down from their co-chief jobs after four years in the gig.

That means the DC narrative universe, which includes characters such as Superman and Batman, is once again in turmoil, looking at potentially yet another reset after Gunn rebooted the continuity under his tenure.

While rival Marvel has kept its big-screen stories bundled under the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2008, and on TV/streaming since 2021, DC has had various creative hands in charge, most notably under divisive filmmaker Zack Snyder who set out to build a narrative world called the DC Extended Universe.

It was starting to seem as if steering DC was a poisoned chalice.

When Gunn arrived in 2022, he largely wiped the slate, retiring Snyder’s cast such as Henry Cavill as Superman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam, and kept only slivers of the existing continuity that he was involved in, such as The Peacemaker series with John Cena.

Instead, the filmmaker best known for the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy outlined a vision for the next decade of DC Studios, starting with a new iteration of Superman that he would write and direct.

That film arrived in 2025, starring David Corenswet as the titular hero, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. It was critically well-received but only a modest commercial success.

That was followed earlier this year by Supergirl, starring Australian Milly Alcock and directed by Craig Gillespie, which took a box office drubbing. The third film, Clayface, a horror movie directed by James Watkins, is in cinemas at the moment, but hasn’t set the world on fire.

Contextually, the superhero genre has been an inconsistent box office performer since the pandemic. Marvel, too, has seen several of its releases flounder.

On the TV side, Gunn has overseen further seasons of The Peacemaker, Lanterns and the upcoming The People v Gorilla Grodd, a spin-off featuring Superman’s Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo).

The Robert Pattinson Batman movies directed by Matt Reeves, as well as its TV spin-off, The Penguin with Colin Farrell, were not considered to be under Gunn’s DC narrative continuity, although they still sat under the same corporate structure.

In a statement posted to his Instagram, Gunn said his Superman sequel film, Man of Tomorrow, was still slated for release mid-next year.

The movie has already been filmed and is in the post-production stage. It will see Corenswet reprise his Superman, with Hoult, Brosnahan, Gisondo, Ed Gathegi, Nathan Fillion and Isabella Merced also returning. Alcock is also expected to show up as Supergirl, as is Xolo Mariduena as Blue Beetle, one of the vestiges from the Snyder era.

Beyond that, Gunn revealed he and Safran had just been “engaged on another DC project which I’m writing, and we’ll see where it goes after that”, but did not reveal what this mysterious film or TV series might be.

When Gunn set forth his decade-long plans for DC Studios at the start of 2023, that had included Superman, Supergirl, Lanterns and animated series Creature Commandos, but also a raft of other projects that now seem unlikely to ever happen.

These included a movie based on Wildstorm characters, an Amanda Waller series and a Swamp Thing horror. Some of these mooted ideas had already been dropped.

In his statement, Gunn said that “the characters we set up will live on”, but that seems far from guaranteed given the propensity for new bosses to start over rather than labour on with someone else’s vision. Fans should brace for a new round of whiplash.

Former Marvel producer Jeremy Latcham has been named as the replacement, to serve as president and chief creative officer of DC Studios. His credits have included Iron Man 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Latcham is not, relatively, a high-profile name in the industry and will report directly into Skydance movie bosses Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein. In his statement, Latcham tipped his hat to DC Comics’ history and the fandom, but made no mention of Gunn and Safran.

The executive moves are surprising given the pair appeared to have survived the executive purges in the wake of DC Studios parent company Warner Bros’ merger with Paramount under the Skydance label.

The two were named as part of new owner David Ellison’s leadership team only one month earlier. Gunn and Safran previously bypassed Goldberg and Greenstein, and was accountable only to Ellison.

When Gunn and Safran was appointed as heads of DC Studios under the former Warner Bros boss David Zaslav, it was an unusual arrangement.

It’s rare for a filmmaker, rather than an executive, to be given such a position, unless it was a company they started and owned, and still also continue to make movies and TV shows. That hybridity seems to have been part of Gunn’s early exit.

Gunn said that although he has loved his time at the helm of DC Studios, it has also “been trying, to say the least”.

He added, “I dislike the at-times corporate nature of the job (thanks to Peter for taking the brunt of that).

“I’m always a very hard worker but as a filmmaker, I would at least get to take short breaks to unwind and I’ve stolen even that time from both myself and my loved ones over the past four years.”

Gunn said he was “relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking” and had cited demands to share his focus across various projects as well as his wider studio responsibilities as reasons why the role ultimately didn’t suit him.