In 1984, DC Comics hit a renaissance period, putting out titles that were really connecting with readers. There was even a well-known slogan from that era: “The New DC. There’s no stopping us now.”
Just over 40 years later, a case could be made that the same mantra is coursing through DC Studios, the Warner Bros. Discovery division focused on bringing the popular comics characters to screens big and small.
“We don’t want these characters to die out,” said DC Studios co-head James Gunn at a press event Friday. “We want bring new stories and new life, we want to introduce these characters to new generations. And I think we are doing that, slowly but surely.”
DC Studios, which Gunn runs with Peter Safran, is just over two years old. And its big test will be this summer’s Superman, which Gunn wrote and directed as the division’s inagural fim.
But Gunn and Safran are not waiting to see how Superman flies before making next moves. The duo are moving with the speedy deliberation of the Flash to get as many projects going as possible. Maybe before anyone can stop them.
The space fantasy Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is halfway through production in London. Lanterns, a HBO series featuring heroes Hal Jordan and John Stewart, began shooting in Los Angeles last week.
Clayface, a body horror thriller based on the Batman villain finally found its director and will shoot this summer for a fall 2026 release. Sgt. Rock, a period war movie to be directed by Luca Guadagnino, is actively looking for its star. And an animated movie titled Dynamic Duo is in pre-production.
This August, season two of action comedy series The Peacemaker will debut on Max. Smaller but key steps for the identity of the division included acquiring the documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which in the last several weeks won awards from BAFTA and the PGA; and unveiling its first MAX animated series, Creature Commandos.
At the meeting with journalists Friday, the WBD’s Burbank lot’s own dynamic duo gave updates on the slate and explained the ethos and strategy driving their decision-making.
Gunn and Safran took over in November 2022 after WBD head David Zaslav made it a priority to revitalize the storied IP factory after the merger of Warner Media and Discovery. Prior to that, DC had fractured into several fiefdoms, with actors, filmmakers and producers competing for a piece of the pie. It was a dark time for the brand.
“The DC brand was being defined by different creative teams at the company, each was pursuing their own distinct vision of the characters, the story… the result was not one DCU but many,” summed up Safran. “This fracture proved very challenging to consumers and it chipped away at the identity of the brand.”
Fron the duo’s perspective, a lot of work has already been done, even ahead of Superman’s release. “We’ve unified the brand, we’ve greenlit five theatrical films, made three live action series, and are producing five animated series,” he said. (My Adventures with Green Lantern and Starfire are two of the animated titles.)
The goal for the company is to make two live-action films and one animated movie per year while also producing two live-action and two animated series for Max per year.
The company aims to work in multiple genres and sizes of projects. “We don’t serve one kind of audience, so why make one kind of movie?” Safran said, adding, “Working in a multitude of genres, it affords us the opportunity to allocate resources where they can make the biggest impact. We budget according to the demands of the story, and the revenue expectations of each title.”
And while there will be connectivity between movies and shows to give that “universe” feel, the duo don’t want each entry to feel like a chapter to a larger story.
“We remain steadfast that each of these projects work as a standalone project,” said Gunn. “So you can see Superman, you can watch Lanterns, without having to see both of them. Although if you can, there will be special things in there for people who have seen both.”
One thing that is the undercurrent driving the division is the writing of the scripts.
“We are writer-driven,” declared Gunn. “We are not going to greenlight or put anything into production until we are happy with the script….It is hard enough making a good movie with a good script , it’s almost impossible to make a movie with a script that you’re writing on the run.”
Scripts that weren’t up to the duo’s snuff have displaced other projects on the slate. And scripts that hadn’t even been dreamt of have risen to the top of the production pile, with Rock and Clayface being prime examples.
“We had no plans making a Clayface movie,” noted Gunn. Even after scribe Mike Flanagan pitched what they felt was a great idea, there was still a wait and see attitude. “He turned in a script and it’s one of the best scripts that we’ve read.”
Said Safran, “We’ve laid out internally a plan but we’re happy to pivot as we discover things in the making of Superman or Supergirl or scripts being written. There’s a flexibility built into it even thoough we know where the larger story is headed.”
And while Gunn and Safran didn’t elaborate, they did say they had a six-year plan that would include an Avengers: Endgame-style culmination — a reference to Marvel Studios’ 2019 climactic movie, which Gunn worked on as an executive producer thanks to his role as director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
The execs acknowledged that some projects on the initial DC slate they unveiled in January 2023 have met challenges tha couldt bedevil Brainiac himself.
“We’ve taken a couple of cracks at it but still haven’t been able land,” Safran says about Waller, a Peacemaker/Suicide Squad spinoff that was to star Viola Davis. “Waller has been a bumpy road.”
A series on time traveling hero Booster Gold was waiting for a showrunner to make time for it but “maybe he fell out of love, maybe he got busy,” he says, “but we had to pivot.”
The Authority, a superhero group created in the late 1990s, had a script that “has had a harder time coming along,” notes Gunn. “It hasn’t been much a priority.”
Additionally, James Mangold’s take on horror hero Swamp Thing also seems to have cooled. “We talk about it occasionally,” Gunn said.
And then there’s the Batman problem. Or several.
Despite strong efforts, any new movie featuring the Dark Knight seems years away. It’s been three years since Matt Reeves’ The Batman introduced Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne in March 2022, making over $772 million during the pandemic no less, but a sequel seems no closer than before.
“He is yet to turn in a full script but what we have read so far is incredibly encouraging,” Safran said.
DC Studios is also concurrently developing The Brave and the Bold, centered on Batman and his son, Damian Wayne. But although it was announced in 2023 that Andy Muschietti would direct the feature and be a producer on it, the filmmaker behind The Flash and It movies seems to be at arms length from the project.
“We’re developing the Brave and Bold script right now and he’ll be the first one to see it,” Safran said, referring to Muschietti while also strongly implying the filmmaker is not involved in the project’s development.
Gunn went so far as to say he was now the driving force of the title. “Everybody knows I love Batman and it’s important to me so I’m working very closely with the writer on Brave and the Bold,” he said. The writer’s name was not revealed.
Gunn poured cold water that Pattinson would star as Batman in Brave and the Bold and bristled at the word “sharing” the actor with Reeves. He said there were no serious conversations about the actor continuing his role into the broader DCU rather than staying in the separate universe of Reeves’ world.
The small screen also seems to have trouble in the Batcave. While The Penguin, a spinoff of Reeves’ Batman that continues to steal award after award (on Sunday, star Colin Farrell won the SAG Award for best actor in a limited series), there seems to be no plan for a follow-up. When asked by a second season, Safran plainly said “We don’t know. There are a lot of moving pieces, probably most importantly Colin himself. And 800 pounds of makeup.”
Right now, however, the focus is back on Superman. Gunn is returning to Atlanta this week to continue the post-production process on the movie. And while there aren’t any major plans for DC Studios to be at San Diego Comic -Con, the division plans on making a splash at CinemaCon, the annual gathering of theatre owners at the top of April.
And while some may wonder if the character, an embodiment of so-called American values or human values, can sidestep cultural debates, Gunn believes he’s the right Superman beccause he’s not part of the cultural moment.
“I think he’s the right Superman because he is a character that stands for something that is solid, stands for basic human morals, basic human integrity, basic belief in protecting others and protecting the weak being good to people and being honest,” he said. “People are looking for heroes right now. They are looking for values of goodness, looking for people who are good and decent human beings. And Superman is that.”
And they will leave no stone unturned in order to get word out on their first movie, adding that the full weight of WBD is behind Superman.
“DZ (David Zaslav) loves what we’re doing, loves the movie, and has really rallied the entire company behind Superman for this summer,” Safran explained. “You’ve seen what can happen when Warner Bros. Discover gets together behind a Barbie or a Beetlejuice or a Wonka or Kong. And that’s how its being treated right now for Superman. Everything that DZ has promised us two years ago when we got the job, it’s all been a reality.”
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