After four years, James Gunn and Peter Safran will no longer be leading DC Studios after the end of the month. A lot of people have been trying to figure out what caused their ousting, whether it was Supergirl‘s box office failure or doing Clayface before Batman, but I don’t think either of those is truly to blame. The DC Universe was always destined to fail because Gunn refused to do two very important things the moment he got the job, and I’m about to tell you what they were.
The DCU Wasn’t a Clean Break from the DCEU
As soon as Gunn was revealed to be writing a new Superman movie (that he also ended up directing) that would not star Henry Cavill as the Man of Steel, it was clear that the DC Extended Universe was going to end. Except then it didn’t. In a bizarre “have your cake and eat it too,” Gunn decided to keep his DCEU projects largely canon in the DCU. The wiser decision would have been to have a clean break/hard reset from the DCEU, with no connective tissue between the two shared universes.
Creature Commandos, which was so clearly in development before Gunn took over DC Studios, was tweaked to kick off the new DCU. The adult animated series picked up after the events of The Suicide Squad, dealing with its fallout while also laying some groundwork for the new universe. Peacemaker Season 2 then arrived, and all it did was use the “last season on Peacemaker” recap to swap out the DCEU Justice League cameos for the DCU’s Justice Gang. Why couldn’t Gunn have just made an entirely new Peacemaker show with John Cena? Your guess is as good as mine.
Gunn’s refusal to start fresh and keep certain things from the DCEU (Xolo Maridueña’s Blue Beetle was another) made things unnecessarily confusing for fans who grew up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and care about continuity between projects and a proper timeline.
Superman should have been the true start of the DCU, not Gunn’s DCEU leftovers. And if not Superman, then The Batman.
Gunn Needed to Merge or Scrap Matt Reeves’ The Batman Universe
Gunn choosing to keep parts of the DCEU canon in the DCU is entirely his fault. What isn’t, at least not at the start of his DC Studios tenure, was inheriting Matt Reeves’ The Batman Epic Crime Saga and the already greenlit The Penguin and The Batman Part II. The Batman had been a modest hit (compared to Nolan’s trilogy) at the box office, so a sequel made sense… until Gunn rebooted the DCEU.
Announcing duelling Batman solo movies, one set in the DCU and the other in the Reevesverse, was always a bit of a head-scratching move. Of course, when Gunn took over, The Batman Part II had a 2025 release date, so Gunn likely expected to be done with Reeves’ Batman universe either then or by 2027-28 at the latest if a third movie was made. However, the delays just kept coming, which in turn delayed the arrival of the DCU Batman.
There were reports around 2023 or so of Gunn asking Reeves if he would be interested in merging The Batman into the DCU, which Reeves declined. Merging those two worlds would have been the right call. Robert Pattinson’s Batman was already popular with audiences, and there was no baggage connected to it like there was with Gunn’s DCEU projects.
But had Gunn wanted the DCU to start with an older Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin, as The Brave and the Bold was announced as, then Gunn should have scrapped The Batman Part II. Yes, a controversial opinion, but one that would have allowed Gunn to get the DCU Batman introduced either in 2025 as well, or this year, meaning that it could have come out before Clayface.
A DC shared universe is nothing without Batman, and delaying his introduction because of The Batman Part II was the wrong move. Gunn needed to come in swinging at DC Studios, but unfortunately he just couldn’t find it in himself to realize that the DCU would be better if it had no ties to the DCEU or that Reeves’ The Batman Part II was going to be a problem for the DCU after its first delay.
So, while there are surely a dozen more reasons why Gunn’s DCU was never going to see its 10-year plan realized, these are the two that stick out the most to me. It does sound like incoming DC Studios president Jeremy Latcham will be continuing Gunn’s DCU, albeit with some major slate changes, but with Gunn no longer in charge, fans should expect to see a far different DCU from the one they would have gotten under Gunn. Gunn’s DCU was a fun experiment, but at the end of the day, it’s just another chapter in Warner Bros.’ (and now Skydance’s) inability to get audiences hyped for a DC cinematic universe.
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