James Gunn's DCU Is Officially Dead, and That's Good News for Superman Fans

Published Nov 9, 2026, 2:07 PM EST

One answer shared earlier this year on Reddit succinctly nails the problem with Gunn's vision for the DC Universe. The first movie is still Iron Man (starting strong, like with Gunn's Superman), but the second release is Ironheart (a spinoff focused on a less popular character á la Supergirl), and the third project is Venom (a superhero-less villain spinoff just like Clayface). That meme was posted four months ago. In hindsight, it reveals exactly what went wrong with the DCU.

News broke on Monday, Nov. 9 that DC Studios co-CEOs Gunn and Safran would be stepping down from their shared role, with former Marvel exec Jeremy Latcham taking over as sole leader of the Skydance Media division. It's unclear whether Latcham will reboot the DC movie franchise yet again, though Gunn said in a message on Threads that he still plans to complete and release his Superman follow-up, Man of Tomorrow, while also teasing another unannounced DCU film.

But here's the thing, while I'm still excited for Man of Tomorrow, it's hard to feel like there was an actual plan with momentum for the future of the DCU. From Clayface and Supergirl to Peacemaker and Lanterns, it felt like Gunn was mostly just winging it based on whatever sounded awesome and different than what Marvel was doing. Unfortunately, it also had to cohere. We never really got to that part of the plan. (Rest in peace, "Chapter 1: Gods & Monsters," we hardly knew ye.) So putting the franchise in the hands of a Marvel business guy can't be any worse than letting Gunn continue to fly blind, can it?

James Gunn's DCU track record so far

Image: DC Studios

Aside from one solid hit with Superman, Gunn's DCU has mostly been a theatrical disaster. Supergirl demonstrated how difficult it is to turn a lesser-known superhero into a box office hit these days. Director Craig Gillespie's half-hearted attempt to ape Gunn's style also revealed the flaw in putting an auteur at the top of a film studio.

Meanwhile, Clayface earned mixed reviews while revealing just how jumbled the franchise had already become, raising more questions about the existence of characters like Batman and the Joker in the DCU than it answered. (In response, Gunn announced a podcast specifically designed to explain which parts of his The Suicide Squad were canon, a great sign about the health of a cinematic universe.)

Photo: John Johnson/HBO Max

As for the TV shows, it seems like most people skipped Creature Commandos (or quickly forgot it existed), and while Peacemaker was great, it always felt more like a passion project for Gunn than the actual future of the DCU. Lanterns is perhaps the best live-action project to come out of DC since 2022's The Batman, but both Gunn's lack of involvement and the total uncertainty around a second season renewal suggests it was more of a fluke than a sign of things to come.

So even being generous, Gunn currently has two wins out of six total projects. Not a great way to launch a mega-franchise!

James Gunn's vision for DCU's future

Image: Warner Bros.

The future of the DCU under Gunn and Safran (who was seemingly more of the business guy in their partnership) is somehow even rougher than the past. Beyond Man of Tomorrow, the only confirmed movie in development was an animated/puppet film about two Robins called Dynamic Duo, which sounds like a blast but the kind of comedic romp that doesn't fit a cinematic universe. We're also expecting a Mister Miracle animated series from Lanterns co-creator Tom King, a Jimmy Olsen spinoff series from the guys who made Netflix's American Vandal, and Creature Commandos season 2. All cool ideas, but all much more side-projects than franchise-builders.

Other in-development ideas that had been publicly floated by Gunn and co. include a long-promised Batman movie titled Batman: The Brave and the Bold, a Wonder Woman movie, a Bane/Deathstroke villain-team up movie, and countless more. These ideas seem a bit more promising, but they're all so far from becoming a reality that it's hard to believe they ever would have happened, at least in the way Gunn described them. The overseer promised on that Suicide Squad podcast that he was coming close to casting his version of Bruce Wayne; it's now unclear if we'll ever see what he was picturing.

To bring back the MCU comparison, the greenlighting of taste-driven, genre-hopping projects could result in a fun slate, but it's definitely not the way to build a successful, interconnected cinematic universe that wins over devoted fans who show up to see your movies. Marvel meticulously planned its first few arcs, carefully adding new characters while building towards the arrival of Thanos over almost a decade. You might argue that this was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement with countless factors beyond Marvel's control, but even the MCU's sloppy lead-up to Avengers: Doomsday feels like a Machiavellian plot compared to whatever Gunn has been up to for the past few years.

Maybe Gunn and Safran could have turned things around with a bit more time. Or maybe they never much cared about any of that and just wanted to make a handful of cool movies and TV shows. Either way, as much as I hate to say it as a longtime fan of his movies, the death of Gunn's DCU is ultimately for the best.

And hey, at least we still get to see what he had planned with Man of Tomorrow.